Lagann Gurren
by Fatestalker
Summary: A legendary hero seizes a priceless opportunity to not only live again, but to change a life once lived. But who could have imagined that out of the infinite possibilities, the most important change of all would be in a name?
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: What!? You can't just end it like that!

* * *

"What!? You can't just end it like that!"

There are many reasons I have my job, but if I had to select the most important one? I'd choose my limitless patience. Every time.

"I mean, come on!"

My patience is more than just limitless. Some of my peers have an idea of 'patience' that amounts to little more than zoning out when things start to irritate them.

Not me.

"Sure, in the end we mighta saved the world, stopped the baddies, and cracked the heavens..."

My patience is attentive. In the face of otherwise interminable boredom it never ignores you. It never belittles you. My patience makes you feel like the center of the universe. Like an implacable glacier, it weathers your resolve with little more than time and pressure, until it grinds you down to whatever I require.

At least... in theory.

"But it can't just end there! He didn't save the girl!"

"You heard him yourself," I replied, forcing a word in edgewise in my charge's endless tide of raving. At times, his blathering seemed to rival the scale of the galactic titans we had observed not so long ago.

"Yeah, yeah," he cut right back in, not missing a beat. "The dead should stay dead. I'm not deaf, y'know! Even if I'm not sure how my ears are supposed to work when I'm like this..."

"You don't have ears or anything else like that," I said for what very possibly could have been the millionth time. "It's just you making a mental projection to make sense of your current-"

"You don't think _I_ know that!?" my charge interrupted yet again. Speaking of imaginary organs, had I a tongue I'd probably have been biting it non-stop. If only in pursuit of some salve that might assist in tolerating this level of impudence.

"I was merely-"

"Put a sock in it, Shinigami. Just so ya know? You won't get me to go against my blood brother, either. If he says the dead should stay dead? That's the way it should be - no ifs, ands, or buts about it."

For once, I was willing to brush off his brutish - and incorrect - labeling of me as 'Shinigami', his idea of a death god bogeyman. I knew an opportunity when I saw one.

"But, Kamina," I said, modulating what he was sure to interpret as a 'voice' to achieve maximum emotional response, "if that is the case... why are you still here?"

On an emotional level, I knew that had shaken his resolve. With vanishingly few exceptions, those individuals who have died and continue to linger are possessed with egos timid and frightened. That they vainly cling to lives that no longer exist, indeed, is a testament to the purity of their overwhelming terror. And Kamina, I long grown to understand, was more terrified than most, not less. But his words continued to betray no fear, despite their transparency.

"Hah! As if that would matter in the slightest, Shini. After all, I'm the great Kamina! And more importantly, I'm not dead!"

Fantastic. This again.

"The beating of a man's soul pumps in time with the rhythm of his destiny! It's the pulse of that soul - not blood or flesh, but the singular burning spirit of the lone wolf - that's how I know I'm alive!"

He tried to strike a dramatic pose, disregarding the reality of him having no body with which he could make a pose with in the first place. "You've done pretty good to pull the wool over everyone's eyes, Shinigami. But sooner or later you had to know the spirit of the wolf would grow to burn too brightly for you to escape. It shines through the power of our manly souls, and now we see your cheap, sheepish tricks for what they are!"

I had long learned to stop marveling at his impromptu, often incoherent monologues, yes. But there was a kernel of truth in this. Or, at least, something that I did not understand.

Kamina had crossed time and space (and in truth, much more than that) to save his friends when they had been brought to their lowest point of despair. Honestly, I was still at a loss at how he was able to _perceive_ what was required to accomplish a feat like that in the first place. For years it had just been him, alone... if you didn't count me, the sap with the thankless job of trying to get him to accept his fate and move on from his long expired mortal coil.

But now? Now it seemed like Kamina was perceiving EVERYTHING.

"Shini, listen. The things we couldn't do, the people we couldn't save, the trying to fool me into thinking I'm dead... I could almost forgive all that and just let it go. The great Kamina is nothing if not magnanimous in victories both large and small."

_Well, isn't that charitable of him._

"But, this new thing that's coming," Kamina said, pausing in hesitation. For the first time I could sense true discord lurking between his words. "They're not gonna be able to stop it-"

Now it was my turn to interrupt. "Is that the great _Kamina_ I hear, doubting his blood brother?"

"Hey, screw you! This is different and you know it!"

I couldn't really argue with that. But I also couldn't resist taking that cheap shot. Was there a limit to my patience, after all? I couldn't discount the possibility; I had never had to test it to this extent until now. Most things that die aren't even dealt with by me or my peers. The instinctive understanding of death propels them without any interference on my part.

My role, to put it very crudely, is to encourage those who lack understanding. Or, more rarely, the obstinate. Normally the process is done in a handful of mere moments, if that. Sometimes it can take longer. On rare exceptions there are those who may hold out for entire days, if the deceased is particularly reticent. But not _seven years_. I couldn't understand how he hadn't gone crazy by now.

Assuming the remote possibility that he hadn't already been crazy when he got here.

"So you can do your worst, Shinigami! I'm not going to budge one inch until I can get out of here, no matter how long it takes! A real man doesn't just give up because someone tells him he's dead. He cuts through the barriers of existence with his sword, the sword of his very life. And the blood that sword spills will make a path-"

"Okay."

"-to your destiny, a destiny that wait what."

This wasn't the ideal solution. I didn't know any of my peers personally that had ever resorted to it, and briefly contemplated the approximation of embarrassment in my employing it. But Kamina was correct, for once. Perhaps more importantly, I was beginning to realize this might be the only option that he was willing to go along with. And I really didn't want to stay here forever, either.

"I'll let you go back. You win."

"I... I..."

My goodness. Had I known this suggestion would have actually rendered him speechless, I might have acquiesced a lot sooner.

"Hey, what's the big idea!?" Kamina said, regaining his composure with infinitely more alacrity than I had hoped for. "After all this time, you just give up? No grand realization? No villainous breakdown? What kind of trick are you trying to pull!?"

"Not a trick," I replied, trying not to take too much pleasure in finally having my charge on the defensive. "This is not my preferred option. But given the situation, I am prepared to agree to it."

"And what is 'it', exactly, Shini?"

"Reincarnation," I said haltingly. "Of a sort. On the condition you give me your word that once you die, you come with me once and for all."

"Yeah, yeah, that's fine, whatever." Even if it was not evident in his words themselves, in the moment I could _feel_ the effervescent self-satisfaction oozing from every facet of his emotional state. "You just drop me off in Kamina City - man, that sounds good to say out loud - and I'll get to warning Simon, and then-"

"That won't work."

"What!?" The burning of Kamina's emotions re-erupted tenfold as my words shut his plan down. "Give me one good reason why the hell not!"

I took the time and effort to approximate the vocalization of a sigh before speaking again:

"You're dead."

"...oh. Then... huh?"

"If I bring your soul back through space-time to live once again, it has to inhabit the proper receptacle. Your life. Your body."

"So... what? Something ridiculous, like, time travel, then?"

_After watching his friends seize the power of a colossus bigger than galaxies, now he wants to complain about something being ridiculous. _"Probably not as you would think of it. All the memories, the things you'd want to do all over again... it won't work like that. The soul of your past is just as much Kamina as you are Kamina, right now. One soul cannot supplant its twin. Rather, in such a situation, the two would combine."

"Manly combining, yeah! The graceful beauty of soaring through the air with your fighting spirit-"

"Yes, combining," I said, cutting him off brusquely. "Far from bringing all your knowledge of the future back to change things, if you focused with all your might you could possibly change... two or three decisions that you made, tops."

"Two or three?" Kamina asked. I could feel he was nearly balking. "That's it?"

"Yes," I confirmed. "And I can guarantee you this, Kamina. No matter what else changes..."

"Hmm?"

"You will still die."

In an instant, it felt like the embers of Kamina's burning passion had been smothered with a totality that the brutal isolation of seven years had never been able to accomplish.

"On the same hour, of the same day, on the same battlefield of your previous death," I continued. "You will fight, and you will die. Nothing you or I can do can change that."

Kamina fell silent, and an eternity seemed to pass in the wake of my declaration.

I was keenly aware of how much of a gamble I was taking by making this suggestion. The eternal grind of our present situation did have the advantage of being _eternity_. To resist forever was an impossibility that sooner or later any soul would submit under. I was trading it for a risk; a wager that was as blunt as it was selfish, as fearsome as it was tantalizing.

And yet I had to wonder... perhaps I had come on too strong?

"Well, then... what the hell are we waiting for!?"

And just like that, the dying embers of indecisive emotion were now giving way to a raging conflagration of determination. _If only I were able to _intentionally_ encourage him like this, _I realized,_ I would have been done years ago._

"Remember," I admonished, hoping to rein my charge in before he got too pumped up. "Once you die again, you finally give up this fight and come with me. On your honor-"

"Idiot!"

_Well. That didn't work._

"You think the great Kamina would go back on his word? Just who the hell do you think I am!?"

"Clearly not someone who tires of his catchphrases even after their nonstop repetition in total isolation..." Okay, maybe my patience was fraying a little more than I had letting on.

"Don't get me wrong, Shini," Kamina continued, his voice growing grave and as serious as I could reasonably hope to expect. "The great Kamina would never dream of stealing the spotlight from his blood brother. I'm just going back to give him a little push in the right direction."

"If you say so," I said skeptically. "Then we have an accord, Kamina. Your fate is your own, for the little time you have it."

The decision made, I broke the endless nothingness with a nearly countless series of images. Kamina in his infancy, Kamina with his father, Kamina fighting, Kamina embracing... Kamina dying. It was all there, in the dizzying fractal imagery. "Would you like to start at the beginning of your life, the end, or...?"

"Oh, no, Shini. I have just the place to start..."

Normally I would have just been relieved at the prospect of this coming to a close, but as much as I had come to appreciate my charge's lack of sanity, I was still fairly confident that he wasn't stupid. The fact that I was having more reservations about doing this than him now was just so quintessentially... Kamina.

_Well,_ I mused as I initiated a process that, for the first time in my existence, I didn't know the outcome of. _At least we won't run the risk of getting bored now._


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Just who the hell do I think I am?

* * *

"I'm gonna tell you something important now, so you'd better dig the wax outta those huge ears of yours and listen close!"

The wiry young man's declaration was a curious one, as the mechanical mammoth looming over him did not seem to have any visible appendages that could be fairly called 'ears'. What the construct did possess, however, were eyes, and those gleaming circles of blood red were now glowing hungrily as they fixated on the human standing in its shadow.

"The... the..." The brazen man waved his nodachi as he started to speak again, but his defiant visage quickly gave way to one of confusion instead as an electric, unbearable sensation began coursing through his entire body. Every cell, every molecule of his body screamed out in unison with the sensation of being lit aflame; every one of his senses felt overloaded by sensory inputs far beyond mortal capacity to endure. All the while a single word shut out the rest of the world, overwhelming the man with its deafening finality:

_COMBINING-_

As Kamina's bluster suddenly turned to vacillation, Simon felt his mixture of awe and fear quickly give way to an unambiguous panic. "B-B-Bro, what's wrong?" he asked, staggering back as he watched his blood brother stand paralyzed in front of the gigantic invader. "Bro! Bro! Kamina!"

"I DON'T GET IT," a deafening voice boomed from within the metal monstrosity. "WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE LISTENING FOR-"

A series of loud bangs from above cut off the behemoth's query, accompanied by the impact of high-powered shells on its surface. The construct roared in dismay in time with the descent of a voluptuous young woman toting a high-powered sniper rifle.

_Oh, yeah, that's right..._

"What's... right...?" Kamina wheezed, falling to one knee as another wave of agony cascaded through his body.

_COMBINING-_

The word emerged again, and Kamina felt himself being torn apart from the inside as his head filled with innumerable thoughts not his own. No, that wasn't quite it, but he couldn't figure out what it was...

"All right, you two!" the young woman shouted as she hit the ground and slid back in a wide stance. The rifle fired again and again as she sighted down the beastly construct, until a shot finally knocked it off-balance and it toppled over with a thunderous crash. "You better get back!" she warned. "I only knocked it on its backside; it'll get up again soon."

"A girl... from the surface?" Simon said, his eyes shimmering for a moment with curious wonder before reverting to their earlier panic. "Bro, Bro! Please! Maybe this surface girl can help us!"

_Well, she's helping in one way, that's for sure._ The girl was a red-haired teenager barely older than Simon, wearing little other than transparent yellow glasses, a flame-print bikini top, and black shorts just this side of panties in terms of length. Yet this girl's body was developed beyond her years. As Kamina's eyes traced the firm curvature of the girl's backside up to the pleasantly jiggling mounds of flesh of her chest, he could feel something profound - stirring deeply within him.

"Yoko?" Kamina asked, blurting out the first thing that popped into his head. Fighting back pain as much as he could, he staggered back to his feet and began following the surface girl.

"Hey, how do you know my name!?" the girl shouted over her shoulder at Kamina, keeping her pace as she continued to run. As swiftly as she could manage she slid at the end of her run to a nearby rock wall, ducking behind it for cover.

"I, uh... I don't know," the shirtless young man replied, sidling up next to Yoko without missing a beat.

"What kind of an answer is that? And didn't I tell you to get back!?"

"Hey, it's an HONEST answer!" Kamina protested. "A real man fights through the gaping holes in his memory with the power of the truth he knows once was!"

"What-"

Yoko's voice faded as the shadow of the metallic beast's weapon swept over both her and the clearly brain-addled man at her side. She let out a gasp as the weapon fell to crush her, only in the next second to feel herself being sucked beneath the very earth beneath her.

"Thanks, Simon! Nice save!" Yoko heard the man next to her shouting again. Looking to her left in the cramped hole with a scowl she saw the recipient of his praise: the goggled, blue-haired youth she had seen when first entering this pit.

"Hurry, this way!" Simon urged.

The three began to beat a hasty retreat, crawling upward through the tunnels Simon had carved for them. Kamina's teeth began to grind as he climbed, and he slowed in an attempt to stabilize his rapidly beating heart. It was to no avail; he was barely even able to make out the conversation going on ahead of him.

"Where..."

"...ha Vill..."

"...next door."

It felt like Kamina had two hearts, each spasming into his chest faster and faster, both out of sync with every other organ in his body. As he, Simon, and Yoko, wove through the tunnels and crevices on the periphery of Giha Village, he focused on regulating his breathing. On bringing his body back under control again. Slowly, but surely, it was getting better...

_COMBINING-_

Kamina gripped his chest once more as the pain rebounded again, now shredding his nerves a hundredfold. Every sense in his body escalated to hyper-sensitive levels, and he felt himself unwillingly dragged back into the conversation he had left behind - just in time to notice the surface girl was leveling her sniper rifle out of a window in the rock wall.

"Give me a minute," he could hear her saying, her voice almost too loud for him to understand. "I'm targeting its power conduits; taking those out'll stop him in his tracks."

Kamina couldn't shake the feeling that he should be interrupting this right now. Still, the pain immobilizing him at the moment was as good an excuse for inaction as any.

"Gotcha!"

Yoko's rifle discharged its chamber with a roar and launched its payload at the mechanical monster. In an instant it pierced through the critical location, snapping wires and circuitry all along its fateful trajectory.

_Dammit. Didn't mean to change that..._

"Change what?" Kamina muttered deliriously to himself as he watched the enemy reeled away from them.

_COMBINING-_

Kamina barely had enough time to get ahold of himself as the mecha, now seemingly even _more_ amped up, wheeled around and swept its weapons across in a blisteringly speedy arc. The three individuals were barely able to dive away in time as its bulk smashed through their sniper nest in an instant, collapsing the entire level of rock wall behind them.

"Shoot!" Yoko exclaimed as she hopped away from the destruction. The three continued to descend past floor after floor in their escape, until they were met with yet another waiting set of tunnels. "Looks like it only took out the Gunman's power regulation," Yoko grumbled as she got down on her hands and knees to begin crawling to safety.

"W, w, what the heck does that mean?" Simon asked, looking behind from the head of the pack.

"In short?" Yoko sighed. "It means that it's now hyper-charged with energy. It'll burn itself out, eventually," Yoko said, wincing as the sound of roaring and ever escalating destruction continued from above. "But... this village probably won't last that long at this rate."

Kamina felt himself coming to his senses at the sound of that information. "You crazy broad, you didn't think to mention that beforehand!?"

"I didn't think-"

Both of them snapped their mouths shut as they emerged from the tunnel. In front of them rested a large, angular face, bigger than all three of them put together. Its eyes closed in a display of serenity that seemed to convey something ancient and yet relevant.

"This..." Kamina racked his brain, trying to quell the discord within and remember. "This is it? The face you wanted to show me?"

"Yeah," Simon said, beaming at the flashes of his blood brother composing himself.

"This makes TWO awesome things you've..." Kamina trailed off, nodding with a wince, but Simon's face let him know the sentiment was well-taken nonetheless.

"I wonder if this is a friend of the Gunman up there?" Yoko mused.

"And, here, Bro!" Simon said, trying to snap Kamina out of his reverie. The digger leapt into the top of the giant head, bracing himself against its sides. "Check this out!"

"People ride in it?" Yoko asked in wonder. "But that's impossible..."

"Hey, bro!" Simon continued, trying to jar Kamina into action. "Let's use this to take out that thing up there!"

_This. This is it. This is what I need to change. If only I could get... through..._

"Stop it..." Kamina's voice was nearly pleading now as the pressure on him was intensifying far past his breaking point. "Leave me alone..."

"B, Bro," Simon said, his voice growing lower and more serious at Kamina's anguished expression. "What's wrong? Did you get hurt back up there?"

"I..."

_What's wrong? What's wrong is that so many of our friends died because I wasn't there to stop it. What's wrong is you couldn't save Nia. What's wrong is what's COMING. Everything you've worked for it going to be lost, and none of you... none of you have a clue...!  
_

"Snap out of it, Bro! We need you! You're Kamina, remember!" Simon shook his blood brother's shoulders as violently as his skinny arms could manage in an attempt to bring him back to reality. "The paragon of masculinity. Leader of Team Gurren!"

_That's right..._

"That's right..."

Simon's eyes widened as Kamina suddenly drew upright. His eyes widened to reveal large, practically glowing pupils - pupils swirling with a ferocity his blood brother had never witnessed before.

_Just who..._

"Just who the hell do I think I am?"

Yoko and Simon both looked quizzically at each other in response to Kamina's bizarre statement. Undeterred, the self-described paragon of masculinity was now clambering into the huge head before them all. To Simon, it was almost as if a sense of otherworldly purpose was suffusing his movement.

_COMBINING-_

As the impulse swelled inside him once more, the leader of Team Gurren closed his eyes, and focused - not on resisting, but instead on _accepting_ the discord manifesting within him.

"COMBINING..."

What this discord was... it wasn't malicious. It wasn't benevolent. It was _in_ him, but not _of_ him.

_-SOUL-_

But most importantly, whatever it was, Kamina had been running away from. And it was like he always said - you could never get anywhere by running away.

"...SOUL..."

Simon jumped with a startle as he noticed his drill trinket, already glowing in the presence of the giant face, now illuminating even more strongly in the presence of what he could swear was a similar glow enveloping his blood brother as he began to speak.

_"UNIFICATION!"_

As Kamina spoke the last mysterious word with an air of finality, the voice emanating from him took on a downright otherworldly mystique; for an instant it was as if two voices were overlapping with one another, each identical and yet strangely unique in their own way.

"Bro..."

"Simon!" Kamina exclaimed, not even giving the younger man time to react to the incomprehensible scene before him.

"Y, yeah, Bro?"

"This... you're the one that dug this thing up," Kamina said with a gesture to the head, which was already starting up in the presence of the miniature drill. "That means it belongs to you."

Simon scrunched up his face in apprehension. "But I..."

"Just listen, blood brother. I... I wanna borrow it, okay?" Kamina asked, placing his head to the surface of the mecha in supplication before lifting it to stare intensely at his friend. "I promise I'll pay it back ten times over. You got that?"

Now it was Yoko's turn to have a countenance of apprehension, as it oddly looked like this Kamina guy was staring as much at her as he was at Simon as he spoke.

"N, no problem, Bro!" Simon said enthusiastically at last. A wave of relief washed over the young adolescent as he put his trust in his older friend.

As Simon passed his drill to Kamina and climbed into the head along with Yoko, Kamina idly contemplated what had possessed him to say those things just then. It wasn't that he didn't have faith in Simon. Kamina absolutely did - maybe more faith than he had in himself. But this urge... it was like an indelible imprint on his soul. It felt like he could no more go against it than he could stop the urge to blink.

Shaking the irritating feeling out of his mind, Kamina focused instead on the console. With an eerily familiar feeling, a vision of seeing the universe spinning in motion seemed to emerge right in front of Team Gurren's leader - and in one motion, he slammed the drill into the console and turned it. The mecha surged to life in the wake of the spin on.

"It... it's working, Bro...!"

"Yeah, it is..."

_But nowhere near as much power as back then. I guess that's only to be expected..._

Ignoring the unbidden thoughts once more, Kamina gripped the controls. Their very touch seemed to reject him in a way, and he clenched his jaw as he gripped tighter, throttling the system with as much fighting spirit as he could summon. Arms and legs sprouted from the head, firing spurts of glowing green fire to the amazement of the three passengers of the mecha. With a final grunt Kamina felt the resistance wash away as the head took on a vaguely humanoid form... shortly before a propulsion system kicked in, sending it spiraling back up through the tunnels with Simon, Yoko, and Kamina in tow.

"Bro, you did it!" Simon managed to exclaim in awe as he held on for dear life through every twist and turn. Yoko, for her part, looked as if she was just trying to hold herself back from retching all over the controls.

"Of course I did. I'm the great Kamina, right?" As the three soared into the open expanse of Giha Village proper once again, their sights settled on the frenzied Gunman in the throes of its rampage. Kamina slowed down to a stop, boisterously beginning a taunt even as he simultaneously looked to assess the combat situation.

"Ha ha! You weren't expecting this, were ya, you Gunman S.O.B.?" he shouted as hard as he could, prompting the Gunman to snarl and snap its pointed fangs as it turned to locate the source of the noise.

_So we're weaker than we were before. And our enemy is stronger._ Kamina grinned and maintained a countenance of serenity in contrast to his two nervous allies at his flank. Slowly, deliberately, he directed the squat, angular mecha to move toward their foe.

"Even if Heaven itself tolerates your brutality..."

_Well, this wouldn't be any fun if it were easy. _The eyes of the mecha and Kamina alike flashed in unison.

"...the mighty Gurren does not!"


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: A sword that will carve our very destiny into the stars!

* * *

"What the heck is a Gurren?"

Kamina looked at Yoko with a wry expression, taking a brief moment in the chaos to ogle her chest before speaking:

"It's this little guy right here. I named it after our team, Team Gurren. Only appropriate as a steed for its inimitable leader.

"That's me. Kamina!" he elaborated unnecessarily.

"Wow, Bro," Simon said, his eyes visibly wet with tears behind his digger goggles. "So it's, like... Team Gurren's mascot?"

"Eh, sorta." Kamina stopped and shrugged, scratching his chin as he balanced his recently acquired nodachi sword on his shoulder. "It's better to think of it as, I dunno, more a symbol-"

"STOP. IGNORING. MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

A broad slab of metal careened through the subterranean cavern toward Team Gurren with all the finesse of a tornado. Kamina gripped the controls tightly, concentrating as he considered at least a dozen potential options flying through his head. _Dodging, of course, would be the smart move._

Simon cringed as he saw the attack coming. "L, Look out, Bro!"

"What do you think you're doing!?" Yoko shouted. "We're going to get smashed-"

The denizens of Giha Village fell silent as the inevitable impact approached. But instead of the expected crash of destruction, an entirely different sound was heard in its place - a metallic ping, echoing through every crevice of the underground labyrinth. Seconds later, the onlookers gasped as they watched the attacking Gunman pop up toward the cavern's ceiling like a fly ball. Its pilot howled for dear life as his machine soared through the air in a graceless arc, until finally smashing back into terra firma at the end of its fall.

The relatively pint-sized mecha, in contrast, stood unmoved... save for a single gigantic drill protruding from its right arm. Well, not entirely a drill.

"Now THAT'S what I'm talking about!"

Kamina was beaming so brightly he was sure he would need shades, if he wasn't already wearing his own. Extending out from the mecha's arm was not a cumbersome, weighty drill, such as those used by the ubiquitous diggers of Giha Village. No, this was as much blade as drill, a sword extending along a graceful arc, its length well exceeding that of the entire mecha. Its blade traced up in the shape of a spiral, corkscrewing and whirring fantastically in the wake of the Gunman's attack.

Kamina cheered as he hoisted his nodachi from within the cockpit. The resemblance between mecha and pilot was now uncanny.

"Do you see now, you big ugly mug? This is the weapon that Team Gurren will use to vanquish the lawless and unrighteous! A drill that will pierce the very heavens! A sword that will carve our very destiny into the stars!"

"Amazing, Bro!" Simon said, peeking his head up to confirm the fact that the three of them had not yet been crushed to death upon the rocky floor. "That weapon suits you perfectly!"

"Suits _us_ perfectly," Kamina corrected, beginning to strafe around the hostile Gunman as it looked to regain its bearings.

"Maybe save the self-congratulations for later?" Yoko asked, drawing up her rifle to draw a bead on the Gunman again.

Kamina scoffed, but his gaze remained solemn as he continued to analyze their dire situation. The Gunman, from its gleaming horns to its needlelike teeth to its wide, blood-red eyes, still didn't seem to have a scratch on it. And while that sword trick was wicked cool - just _how_ had he done that, again? - he could tell that its creation had taken a tremendous toll on the mecha he had dubbed 'Gurren'.

Or was it taking the toll on him? Either way, he needed to formulate a plan, and fast-

"It's coming for us again, Bro!"

"Of course it is," Kamina deadpanned as he maneuvered his Gurren up a small hill of rocks to face the Gunman head on. "Don't you know when to stay down, ya ugly cow? Uh, no offense, thunder thighs."

Yoko's face flushed as red as her hair at Kamina's insinuation. "Just who are you calling- wooooooooooooaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!"

A series of strikes directed from the hostile Gunman met nothing but air as the Gurren leapt over the swings. Kamina punched the controls forward and Gurren obediently dived, pouncing down on the bigger mecha's right arm. Swinging up on the appendage, Gurren began running full speed toward the top of its opponent's horned head.

"You better have a plan, numbskull!" Yoko shouted as the Gurren raised its drill-blade to intercept another incoming punch from their enemy's left arm. The two masses of metal clashed again and Gurren reeled from the impact, even as it continued to maintain its sprint.

"Sort of! You remember those power conduits from before?"

"That won't work now!" the redhead said in exasperation. "The uncontrolled power's spiraling out of control, like a chain reaction. Any further damage to that section now would just accelerate the process."

"Ugh, really?" Kamina said with a surprised grimace. "I shoulda guessed that it wouldn't be that easy."

"Bro, DUCK!"

Kamina ducked his head at Simon's warning, tilting his Gurren just in time to avoid the massive arm's attempt to lift Gurren up and impale them into the Gunman's horn. As the stability of the arm gave way beneath his mecha, Kamina took his Gurren to leap into the air, defying gravity for a moment before landing again with a crash. This time, they were on their enemy's head.

"...then again, that gives me an idea," Kamina continued, seemingly nonplussed by the rough landing. "Surface girl! You think you could damage a specific part of the power conduits? Like whatever makes that thing move for example?"

"Its Mobility Systems? Yeah, I think so, but like I said-"

"Then get ready to do it!" Kamina shouted, readying the Gurren for a running charge.

"You're not listeniiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng-"

All three yelled as the smaller mecha dashed back and forth on the top of the broad metal head of their enemy, evading attempts to shove them off that came left and right down the stretch.

"Almost... there..."

Just then, at the very edge of the head, a desperate hit knocked the three for a loop, racking the Gurren and sending them tumbling over the Gunman's backside.

"Bro? Oh, no, that's not good." Simon realized in panic that the impact had jarred Kamina from the controls, and he looked to be incapacitated for the moment as his head was buried in Yoko's ample bosom.

"Where do you think you're resting!?"

Ignoring Yoko's angry exclamation, the young teenager frantically lunged for one of the control sticks of the Gurren and pulled back as hard as his small musculature would allow.

The result was immediate and spectacular. Viridian colored energy cascaded from the legs of the mecha, halting its fall and stabilizing the three in midair - just in front of the Gunman's power conduits.

"Ha ha ha ha!" Kamina celebrated, lifting himself back up off the now very sore cushion that was Yoko's bust. "We got the rest, little buddy," he said authoritatively as he gripped the other stick, causing the Gurren's drill-blade to roar to life once again.

Yoko groaned in indignation, but dutifully began sighting down her rifle at her new target.

Now the Gunman was flailing blindly behind its back, but each of its swings was thwarted by pinpoint deflections from Kamina's drill-blade, each buying a precious second for Yoko to line up her shot.

"Wow, Bro, I had no idea you could fight like this," Simon said as the drill-blade swung in another diagonal cut, parrying a metal limb scant inches from the Gurren.

"Yeah, well... neither did I."

With one last clash of steel on steel and a thunderous clang, the Gunman shuddered and came to a halt under the Gurren's blows.

"This is it!" Kamina shouted. "As long as you don't miss again," he added to the aiming Yoko.

"As if I could miss from _this_ range," the teenage girl said with a scowl as she pulled the trigger. The rifle fired.

For a moment, it appeared as if nothing had happened.

"Did you SERIOUSLY miss _again-_"

And then the legs of the Gunman started shaking.

"Of course I didn't miss- wait, what did you just have me do?"

"Hang on!" Kamina shouted. Summoning up his last reserves of energy, the pilot drove Gurren's drill-blade forward, impaling directly into the enemy's metallic carapace. As he braced himself and ducked down into the cockpit, a strangely familiar looking canopy appeared to encapsulate them all.

Yoko's joints contorted and muscles began to spasm again as she found herself yet again crammed together like sardines with the other two passengers. "So... cramped..."

"You'll be happy about it in a second..." Kamina grunted through his own twisted up legs.

"Seriously, what did that do-"

Yoko stopped the display on the monitors was quickly making the results of her actions now obvious: the enemy Gunman's legs were exploding.

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Simon and Yoko screamed in unison.

"Y'see, I figured that thing probably has various similarities to this. Which means, among other things, propulsion. Overload that, and-"

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"...fine, fine. Long story short, we're going up. To the surface!"

And up they were going indeed. The legs of the Gunman beneath them began to blast off like a veritable rocket. With Gurren still embedded into its back, the larger mecha began rising upward, smashing through the myriad layers of rock above.

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Simon and Yoko continued to scream.

"YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!" Kamina exulted.

Layer upon layer of thick stone was surpassed, each successive level growing brighter and brighter until the full warmth of sunlight greeted the ascending Team Gurren.

"Time... to bail... out...!"

As his two companions stared at him uncomprehendingly, Kamina wrenched the drill-blade out of the skyrocketing Gunman and kicked off, crashing down into the solid ground below. Above, with a crescendo of sound and fury, the Gunman finally reached its apex in a crooked spiral arc. A crack like thunder split the sky as the metal titan erupted like a dazzling display of fireworks, exploding spectacularly in a finish that rivaled the very brilliance of the sunlight itself.

The three individuals below simply marveled at the sight, as much at the twin views of sunlight and moonlight on either end of the horizon as anything else for the two denizens of Giha Village.

"You know... you knew my name before we even met," Yoko's voice finally interrupted the reverent observation. "I didn't really get yours, though..."

"I'M KAMINA."

"Yes, I got that, thank you for constantly speaking in the third person," Yoko said flatly, with no amount of amusement.

"And this is Simon, if you didn't catch that. That furry thing that's about to pop out of your cleavage is Boota."

"What furry thing- hey!" Yoko let out a squeak as a tiny pig-mole appeared from within her breasts, giving out a similar squeak to echo the girl in which it was nesting. "How did you know that would happen?"

"I said it before, I don't know!"

"That's not an explanation!"

"Um, Bro? Yoko?" Simon piped up. Kamina saw his blood brother's teeth were chattering and that sweat was pouring down his face. His eyes followed Simon's shaky hand as he pointed behind them: revealing two more Gunmen hostiles, poised to annihilate the three exposed humans.

Kamina sighed as he balanced his nodachi on his shoulder, shutting his mouth as much as he could as he observed the new threat before them.

_I better not mention that I'm pretty sure we're about to get saved, or she'll really let me have it._


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: I'm combining with you whether you like it or not!

* * *

"Wow, Bro! I didn't know you knew how to 'read'!"

"Ow!"

Kamina yelped in stinging pain as his conversation with Simon was rudely interrupted by Yoko whacking the back of his head.

"What'd ya do that for!?" Kamina moaned. "We didn't even mention your oversized butt this time."

"Okay, fess up," Yoko said, taking care to shoot Kamina a dirty look in the aftermath of her assault. "No one learns how to read while living in a pit."

"Then why were you making fun of us for not knowing?" Kamina complained. The azure-haired teenager pursed his lips at Yoko as he gingerly rubbed the back of his sore head. "Besides, I _can't_ read. You ask me, Simon, I don't see any use in those squiggly lines myself." He shook his head dismissively at the device Yoko held in her hands. "There's no sentiment that isn't best expressed by shouting!"

"Oh, yeah?" Yoko considered Kamina's words for a moment, before raising a mischievous eyebrow. "Tell me, then, Kamina... what's this word?" she asked, raising the handheld screen she was holding in front of Kamina's face.

"Stars," Kamina reflexively answered as he saw the screen.

"You fibbing little-"

"OW!"

Simon relaxed, turning away from Kamina and Yoko's bickering to resume his rapturous staring at the night sky. His first night sky, he continued to remind himself. Luck had certainly favored him and Kamina this evening. Yoko's allies had rescued them from the mechanical adversaries he had come to understand as 'Gunmen'. He had learned, perhaps more importantly, that the Gunmen had pilots - monstrous creatures known as 'Beastmen', who seemed to have tasked themselves with eradicating humans. Most gratifying of all, however, was their allies' invitation to join their community, a place known as Littner Village. It was a prospect the two blood brothers were only too eager to accept.

Now they traveled in tandem, with Gurren dragging the parade of surfacers and their salvage across the flat, seemingly endless wasteland toward their destination. This world without walls or ceiling was so vast as to make the young teenager lose perspective. Even more disorienting than that, however, was what the little digger could not see - a sensation he had been informed was called 'wind', and which whipped and spiraled about him with seemingly no warning. The sensation of rushing air was not unknown in Giha Village, but this was something else entirely. Out of nervous habit Simon reached for his neck, frowning slightly when he remembered his miniature drill was still in Kamina's possession. Despite his faith in his idol, the absence of the trinket was uncomfortable indeed for the blue-haired boy. It somehow gnawed at him from the periphery of his consciousness, almost like a piece of his soul was missing.

"Missing something, honey bunch?" a gaunt and eccentric individual startled Simon with a high-pitched falsetto.

Though he recognized this man from earlier, it was all Simon could do to keep from involuntarily yelping in terror. "Um... Leeron, right...?"

"Bingo. Although, 'Ron' is so much more familiar, wouldn't you agree?"

"Um. Wait, how did you get up here in Gurren?"

"Don't concern yourself with ticky-tacky little details like that, cutie." Leeron winked at Simon and ran his fingers through the boy's soft tufts of hair. "If you've misplaced something, I can help you look... if you like," he offered impishly, leering up and down at Simon with a giggle.

"N, no, that's okay."

"Have it your way," Leeron said with a shrug. "At least put this on, though." Procuring an article of clothing from his satchel, Leeron draped Simon in what the youngster soon realized was an oversized jacket. It was cold, come to think of it.

"Oh... thank you, Leeron." It was a little weird how things had shifted. Yes, Kamina had always said he had been to the surface before. Simon had always assumed it was a short amount of time, perhaps when he was a child; in any case, his blood brother had _never_ indicated the level of knowledge he seemed to have now. Indeed, if Simon was judging his friend's reactions correctly, Kamina seemed to be surprised by it himself.

Stranger still, in a way, was Kamina's change in focus. For as long as he could remember, his blood brother had always been the one to push Simon to his limits. It was because of Kamina that Simon was always trying to live up to his outlandish philosophy: to kick logic to the curb and do the impossible, to pierce the very heavens with his drill. That encouragement was still there, in a sense, but there was a more... protective aspect to it now.

He was overthinking things, he was sure. It made sense that when the chips were down, Kamina would be the one to pilot Gurren. He was the only one who could shoulder the responsibility. What was important for Simon to do now, he knew, was to focus on supporting his blood brother. It was all at once liberating, and yet somehow... disappointing?

He was overthinking things. He had to be.

Back up in the front mecha, Yoko continued to harangue Kamina with her unrelenting skepticism. "It's pretty _convenient_ that you led us straight to my friends from Littner, don't you think?"

"Convenience is just another word for destiny leading us, little lady," Kamina said smoothly, winking behind his signature sunglasses. "It's all a part of that journey that will lead us to pierce the very heavens themselves!"

"Really? You don't sound very convincing..."

"A real man doesn't need to convince himself if he can convince everyone else around him!"

"Okay, now that's just ridiculous."

"Well, I think-" Kamina abruptly stopped, bringing the back and forth to a halt with the rest of the caravan.

"Hey, what're we stopping for, Bro?" Simon asked.

"Yeah, what's the big idea!?" Yoko demanded as well, looking perhaps even more irritated now that Kamina wasn't engaging her.

"...human remains," Kamina said after a long pause.

"What!?" Yoko exclaimed, doing a double take. As she peered out into the distance, however, her voice softened to a whisper. "Hey, he's right..."

* * *

_Okay, this is getting out of hand,_ Kamina thought ruefully as he gripped his late father's long crimson cape in his fist.

At least, he _thought_ those were his thoughts. Finally having some time alone to think was not proving to be the panacea he had been hoping for.

Finding the remains in the wasteland was a relatively uneventful affair. The surfacers had buried the nameless deceased, and were on their way shortly afterward. The discovery, however, was resonating deeply with Kamina. He couldn't stop coming back to death again and again, over and over. Death that didn't even have anything to do with the person they had buried.

So it was that shortly after arriving in Littner Village, Kamina would make a hasty exit under cover of night. He told himself he was just wandering the night sky. But there wasn't much wandering in heading in a specific, predetermined direction. And even less in digging up more remains. Remains of a man that he somehow knew was, without a doubt, his long-absent father.

"You idiot," Kamina whispered, his heart barely in the insult. He stood under the light of the moon and stared into the black holes of his father's skull as he waited uselessly for tears that never came. The surreality was crossing the line into a vile insult, he felt. That he was somehow just confirming the existence of an ancient emotional wound, not the crushing and earthshaking discovery that he knew this to be.

"I didn't know you were here. Dammit, I didn't know. I DIDN'T!" Kamina began to hyperventilate as he felt the nagging feeling in the back of his head contradicting his assertions before they were even said. That feeling was compounding his frustration, as he was realizing he was more agitated by it than the fact that _his father was dead._

"Huh," the familiar voice of Yoko remarked behind Kamina. "I didn't know people from Giha Village were into grave-robbing."

"Heh... as if," the limber man replied, trying not to betray just how actually relieved he was to hear her voice right now. "Just who the hell do you think I am?"

"I've been trying to figure that out all evening, actually," Yoko answered. She wrapped her arms around her chest and shivered slightly, her exposed personage stark against the russet tones of the barren landscape.

Kamina's obnoxious grin was visible even in the waning moonlight as he took up the cape he was still holding and tethered it about his neck. "Y'know, if your brain was as big as your rack, you might eventually get somewhere with that."

Yoko's reaction was nonplussed at the latest crack at her body image. "Simon is fast asleep, if you were wondering."

"Yeah, I bet," Kamina said with a satisfied nod. "He's had a long day, after all."

The teenage girl upturned her lips slightly. "And you haven't?"

"Eh, it's all in a day's work," the leader of Team Gurren crowed as he paused to strike a pose to point toward the heavens, "for this fearless incarnation of masculine fervor."

Yoko remained unmoved.

Kamina donned his pair of distinctive pointed sunglasses and shook his head irritatedly. "What've you been giving me such a hard time for, anyway, Yoko?" he asked. A strange seriousness was suddenly seeping into his voice, and Yoko found herself startled by the change in demeanor.

"You're..." The young girl huffed, stamping her feet as she tried to find the words. "You're hiding something. And you're planning something. I think.

"Even if you don't realize it yourself."

"Maybe you should focus your paranoia on the _Beastmen__, _funbags." Kamina scoffed as he brushed past Yoko, but he was grateful that the cover of night concealed his expression as he headed back to Littner Village.

* * *

"They caused them!"

"Yeah..."

"All those earthquakes were their fault!"

"I agree, Simon... but could you stop... strangling me... for just a second?"

"Oh, sorry, Bro," Simon said, releasing his hold from Kamina's throat to fall behind him in Gurren's cockpit. Shaking off the chokehold with a gasp, Kamina twisted the control sticks forward and the mecha stormed forward to engage the three enemy Gunmen again.

_Gunmen raids. _The villagers of Littner had informed Kamina of their dire existence, to be sure, but to see it in action was another thing entirely. A life where any day could be cut short by a surprise assault by hostile mecha. To constantly find yourselves outgunned, surviving only through guerrilla warfare.

"You human filth! We'll exterminate every last one of you, today!" The leader of the Gunmen's shout echoed through the ravine as his crimson machine cut a swath with its razor shears through the rocky terrain. Kamina swung his arm in front of his face with a pained grunt, barely deflecting the attack at the last second with Gurren's drill-blade.

"Shit," Kamina cursed under his breath as he watched the failing power readings of his vehicle while Gurren buckled. Barely only seeming to operate at marginal levels to begin with, just a handful of attacks from the three Gunmen who had invaded Littner Village this morning was taking him into critical levels.

_Damn, these bastards are cheap. Even if I really like the face on the leader..._

"You keep your hands off of my Bro!" Simon cried, impulsively reaching over Kamina to angrily grip one of the control sticks. Though it was only for a moment, Gurren reacted instantly to jerk forward again, while Kamina couldn't help but notice a simultaneous spike in the mecha's energy readings.

Yoko tightened her yellow glasses as she watched the Gurren charge forward once again from the other end of the battlefield. "Well, what he lacks in judgment, he makes up in guts," Yoko observed as she fired her rifle to back her allies up.

"But they're just too much for him!" a nearby soldier in Yoko's platoon lamented. A few of the others muttered in agreement.

Kamina had been extremely eager to meet the Gunmen on the field of battle, so much so that he had actually taken the field before they had even arrived. But Gurren was majorly outclassed by even the least of the Beastman pilots, let alone all three of them together. Yoko couldn't get a good shot at their power conduits, either - which was to be expected. Sensitive areas like that were typically covered with the heaviest plating a Gunman had; it had been sheer luck that the one in Giha Village had lost that plating from the impact of falling into the pit.

Back in the melee a trio of counterattacks overpowered the Gurren's drill-blade and battered the tiny fighting construct to flip it on its backside. Kamina spun his arms frantically in an attempt to roll away, but found himself thwarted as a pair of crossed swords instantly pinned Gurren to the ground.

"Aaaah!" The two blood brothers of Team Gurren cried out in alarm as they found themselves pressed up against the rear of the cockpit from the force of the impact.

"Now, I'll snap you filthy thieving humans in two, and bring you back as a trophy to the Spiral King."

"Urgh... if only I had just a little more time," Kamina grunted as he strained helplessly under the Gunman's relentless pincering.

"Then take some, you annoying loudmouth!" Yoko punctuated her shout with a precision shot from her rifle that landed squarely on the dual shears of the larger mecha. The shock of the shot knocked the Gunman off its feet, sending it staggering away from the Gurren.

"Annoying humans!" the Beastman within the stunned Gunman spat. "You two - take them out!" The two Gunmen lieutenants cheered and started to make a beeline for Yoko's position.

Meanwhile, Gurren was on the retreat, and Simon was looking as if he was starting to panic. "Bro, I don't understand what we're hoping to accomplish here!"

"Sorry, buddy, neither do I. Well, I think. Maybe. Maybe not-"

Kamina's rambling was brought to an end as a thunderous explosion boomed above their position. Even more jarring, however, were the words that he could almost hear in the blast's aftermath:

_"We lined the top of the cliff with explosives! That worked beautifully..."_

_Great, more inexplicable visions, _Kamina thought_. THAT wasn't getting old or anything. _The top of the ridge crumbled away before Team Gurren's eyes and crashed down onto the large crimson-faced Gunman Kamina had lured this far into the ravine.

"Bro, we got it!" Simon cheered as he saw their opponent stunned under the avalanche. After a moment of exulting, however, he stopped short and swallowed. "But it doesn't look like it's hurt much..."

"That's okay, little buddy," Kamina said. "It's time for us to do this!"

"Yeah! Wait, do what now?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

_Finally._ After feeling as though he had been split between two minds for the past few days, Kamina felt as if a massive burden was lifted from his soul. It may have been temporary, ephemeral, a fleeting moment that he would not be able to regain. But for now, for once, his thoughts were now in perfect unison.

"We're gonna COMBINE!"

"We're gonna combine?" Simon's jaw dropped, followed by him stopping to think for a second. "Wait, combine with whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!?"

The Gurren leapt forward, not up to the top of the enemy mecha, but instead to its gigantic torso, the crimson chassis that housed its face.

_We're gonna have to do this differently._

With an earthrending cry the tinier mecha grabbed ahold of the cockpit and began to pry it open. Kamina pulled and pulled with singleminded determination, while each rip and tear of the enemy Gunman's metal joints reinforced his resolve.

_The true power of a man comes from deep within his chest. In his heart.  
_

"Wh, wha? Get off of me, you filthy humans!" The Beastman's voice was now audible within the Gunman even without its external speakers. The Gurren had cracked the hatch of the stunned mecha completely open and fully exposed pilot within.

"You're completely insane!" an apeish Beastman cried helplessly as he realized what was happening.

"Shaddap!" Kamina shouted as he felt his heart pounding out of his chest. "I'm combining with you whether you like it or not!"

The pilot ducked under the intruder with a screech of terror and fled outside as the cockpit was forced open completely. With a grunt and a smash of twisted metal, Gurren plunged forward with one last push and forced its entire frame into the cockpit.

"Is this even possible, Bro!?" Simon exclaimed in disbelief as the smaller mecha locked itself into the central cockpit of the larger machine.

"Only one way to find out!"

_Well, this is a little early, but no one likes waiting on reruns._

The drill-blade extended from the Gurren's arm again, this time punching into the central control panel in the same way Simon's drill trinket served to operate Gurren itself_._

At first, there was nothing but the awkward silence of uncertain anticipation. Then, as the spiral sword of Gurren began to twist in sync with the drill trinket in Gurren's cockpit, readouts began to flare to life. The normal display was eclipsed by a sea of kaleidoscopic colors; what readouts in the Gurren remained expanded by multiple factors. The screens displayed not only Gurren, they now showed the much larger mech it had forced itself into. Creaking and straining, the movements of both mechas began to stablize. And then to synchronize.

"Ha, ha. Looks like it works on Lagann perfectly, Simon."

Simon beamed, his existing confusion only compounding half a second later. "Lagann...?"

"Yeah, Lagann!" Kamina exclaimed. "Just came up with this big face's name right now."

In a mesmerizing pattern, the two faces began to combine and morph together as though they were one. In seconds, the larger eyes of the newly designated 'Lagann' had shifted into eyebrows, accenting the facial features of Gurren that were expanding to fit the size of the larger mecha, while the mouth of 'Lagann' served to frame the new face.

Yet the mecha did not simply stop at synchronicity. Battle damage was being erased, replaced as good as new - better than new, even. It was strengthening, growing, and bulging outward with an expansion that defied the principles of the conservation of energy. The mecha grew and expanded, its exterior burst with innumerably more layers of armor, and even its very eyes crackled with seemingly limitless energy. And to its arms came the grandest transformation of all: the Gunman's two massive blades began to curve and twist, spiraling into corkscrew patterns. Over and over it folded like the blade of a nodachi, until finally resolving on a shape that reflected nothing less than Gurren's own drill-blade - only multiplied by a factor of two.

Kamina, for his part, felt no shock from this improbable combination. All that he felt was a calm burning of his passion, the result of a plan long-executed and a feeling reaction was unnatural, he knew, but at this point he could no longer help himself. In the moment he understood a cardinal truth: this mecha was what they had been striving for - somehow, it was the key to everything.

"It's... it's amazing, Bro," Simon marveled.

"It's not just that, Simon," Kamina said. "It's a new combination. One that will entwine our hearts together as we pierce the heavens... and carve out our destiny."

The mechs were now seamlessly integrated - and its combined face gave out a dual cry of triumph to mirror Kamina's triumphant roar:

"EVOLUTION OF BROTHERLY COMBINING!

"LAGANN GURREN!"


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: I only need one blade to beat you, after all!

* * *

The elasticity of Yoko's bikini was stretching to the breaking point.

Despite herself, she fumbled and clung to the tall olive green Gunman currently apprehending her by the edges of her skimpy clothing. It was not just a matter of modesty, she reminded herself; at this height the bikini snapping would lead to a very lethal fall to the blasted terrain beneath her.

"Here's that annoying gnat that was bothering the commander!" a voice boomed from within the Gunman that grasped Yoko, while the other, amphibian-styled Gunman hopped up and down excitedly at their catch. The rest of the humans were currently scattering or in disarray, leaving them plenty of time to make this one suffer...

"HEY! Hands off the merchandise, you Gunmen freaks!"

"Commander Guzack? Wait, that's not the commander..."

"ANTI-MOLESTATION-RESCUING-SLASH!" Kamina's highly unorthodox battle cry roared from every speaker of the newly dubbed Lagann Gurren as the mecha lurched forward with an unstoppable momentum. Its left hand's drill-blade, spinning too quickly for the naked eye to track, plunged forth and within an instant impaled the Gunman holding Yoko in its clutches.

"Yaaaaaaaaaa!" the teenaged girl gave out a horrified cry as the impact knocked her from her captivity, her worst fears now realized as she began a fall to what would assuredly mean certain death. Yet her vision of the ground was quickly eclipsed by that of a crimson face - the composite visage of Lagann Gurren, contorting its occupied arm to slide its body under Yoko's descent. The hatch of the cockpit smoothly opened to catch the falling girl as she reached the end of her descent.

The landing was relatively soft, at least for Yoko.

"Geez, woman, do you fill those funbags up with lead in the morning or what?" Kamina complained under Yoko's bosom from the back of the cockpit. Simon, for his part, was blushing speechlessly from his position of being wrapped in the girl's voluptuous legs.

"You killed the commander!? You bastard!"

The cockpit barely closed in time to shield the humans within from the shock of Gunmen counterpunches. The cockpit pitched as mechanical arms slammed into Lagann Gurren's side, creating a cacophony of grating metal and flying sparks that intermingled with the screams of Team Gurren as they bounced helplessly within.

"Ha...! We're not gonna go down that easily," Kamina said, crawling through the tangle of bodies back to the controls. With a spiral rotating motion the Lagann Gurren groaned back to life, and with a sudden flash of motion it twisted again - this time spiraling its dual drill-blades to carve through the amphibian Gunman's arm along with the leg of its taller partner at the same time.

"SPINNING-BLADED-PROTECTION-OF-A-HELPLESS-WOMAN ASSAULT!"

Yoko's muffled protests at this new labeling were barely audible over the ear-splitting shredding of metal and circuitry. The noise was soon cut off, however, by a sickening snap signaling a new complication: Kamina's attack was now halted as the joint of Lagann Gurren's left arm had now broken in two, faltering under the strain of the colossal torque.

"Ha ha ha!" The pilots of the two Gunmen were laughing, despite their own injuries. "Serves you right, stupid humans!"

Lagann Gurren's pilot laughed right back as he seized the controls with an even fiercer grip, causing Simon to cringe and hold onto his blood brother as tightly as he could. "Don't get so cocky, you Gunmen losers. I only need one blade to beat you, after all!"

"Bro! Look out!" Simon shouted as the crippled Gunmen dogpiled on Lagann Gurren at once, causing the mecha to buckle under their combined weight.

"Don't let them flank you!" Yoko added.

"Hey, hey, no backseat driving, you two," Kamina said, just in time for the cockpit to get rocked again from the impact of enemy assaults. Mangled appendages raked over Lagann Gurren's already battered carapace, and it was all Kamina could do to deflect the oncoming Gunmen as they tried to maneuver into a better position.

_Irritating little punks..._ Kamina was getting frustrated. It wasn't so much from the quantity or quality of his attackers, really - these two were chumps, and their inadequacies were only exacerbated by their Gunmen's severe injuries. But though he could easily see the Gunmen's attacks coming, while he somehow had the inexplicable skill to easily fend off their advances, every movement of the newly formed Lagann Gurren was taxing its pilot to the limit. If using the smaller Gurren was the equivalent to Kamina of moving around in water, this was fighting in a tar pit by comparison.

It just required so... much... power. It was all Kamina could do just to stay afloat in the proverbial sticky black soup.

"Ha!" the taller of the two Gunmen's pilot gloated as it hopped forward, its arms closing like a vice around Lagann Gurren's remaining drill-blade. The larger mecha moved too slowly to evade, and in moments the drill-blade was completely dislodged from its frame.

"What was that about needing only one sword to beat us, human?" its Gunman partner taunted, rushing forward with its mammoth rounded head and plowing dome-first into Lagann Gurren. The three friends occupying the cockpit cried out in alarm as the mecha popped up like a fly ball, tumbling with a crash next to a mess of previously shattered Gunmen limbs.

Implacably the two Gunmen advanced to circle about the nearly downed mecha, the landscape filled with a deadly silence only broken by their occasional cackling. "They're coming, Bro!" Simon warned, trying to shake his blood brother out of his stunned incapacitation. The older pilot shook his head and reached for the control sticks weakly, but the composite mecha refused to react to his touch.

"End of the line, human," the frog-shaped Gunman proclaimed victoriously.

"Come_ on,_ Bro. I know you can do this," he nearly sobbed, grabbing Kamina's hand and grasping it in his own around the control sticks. "I believe... I BELIEVE IN YOU...!"

With a nod, the two Gunmen prepared to strike at their prey-

"Now, everyone. All weapons fire!"

A shower of projectiles swept over the barren wasteland and into the two standing Gunmen as Dayakka, the leader of Littner Village, waved his arm to direct a wave of massed fire from every member in his militia. While each individual bullet's plinking was not even sufficient to faze either of their targets, combined the humans' barrage combined with the potency of stinging insects harrying a feral predator.

"What the heck...!?" the amphibian-shaped Gunman shouted in alarm. "Stupid humans. Hurry up, finish 'im off. Quickly-"

But it was too late. Lagann Gurren was now standing upright. And more than that, it was holding something new in its right hand: Lagann Gurren's own shattered left limb, still gripping its other drill-blade.

"Oh, crap-"

"The righteousness of Team Gurren will never yield to your oppressive tyranny!" Kamina bellowed from deep within Lagann Gurren, hoisting the arm and its drill-blade high in the noon sun, creating a scintillating glint of light.

"Your reign of terror is at an end!" Simon chimed in unexpectedly, continuing to grip the hand of his blood brother. "Let's do it, Bro!"

The two Gunmen scrambled around in a line as they attempted to beat a hasty retreat.

"TWO ARMS BECOME ONE!" Kamina howled, moving his arm along with Simon's to line up the two arms of Lagann Gurren above their hapless foes. "EARTH SPLITTING BLADE OF BROTHERLY JUSTICE!"

With a single falling stroke, the drill-blade simultaneously bisected both enemy Gunmen, and a pair of billowing explosions erupted to vanquish Team Gurren's adversaries in purifying flame.

A resounding collection of cheers went up through the hills and valleys surrounding Littner Village as the human defenders observed their victory with ecstatic disbelief. Even Yoko could not help herself from joining in, much to the chagrin of her companions in the cramped compartment within Lagann Gurren.

* * *

"So there we were, hanging on by a thread, when Simon, my trusted blood brother, grabs my hand and starts lifting us up."

"Oooooooh," the crowd murmured as it stared rapturously at Kamina continuing to dramatically recount the fight the vast majority of them had witnessed only hours before.

Simon, for his part, was not among them. He instead was slumped over on the ground in a far-off corner of Littner Village, making it all the more surprising to him when Yoko's distinctive physique appeared.

"Oh, um, hi," the younger boy said, trying not to stare at... well, any part of her body, really. Though if Yoko noticed his furtive glances she declined to acknowledge it, instead kneeling down in front of Simon to ensure his vision was entirely eclipsed by her chest.

"How's the other hero holding up?" she asked, patting Simon's head. Only belatedly did she realize it was matted with sweat drops.

"Oh, I'm not a hero," Simon replied. "Bro did all the work, I just got in the way..."

"That's not what he thinks," Yoko said. She glanced over to the continuing escalation of his monologue and could not help but make a soft, if rueful smile.

"Oh, he's just saying that, I-I'm sure."

"Really?" The teenage girl raised a coquettish eyebrow. "'Cause that's not what I think, either."

"W, what do you mean?" Simon said with a puzzled expression at Yoko's claim.

"I don't really get it, but... he needs you in there." Yoko touched her hand to Simon's, provoking a furious blush that he desperately hoped was not noticeable in the faint light. "I'm sure of it. Honestly, I keep half-expecting him to hand over the controls to you completely."

A blank stare was the only response Simon could give to this assertion.

"...get some sleep, huh?" Yoko finally spoke again, breaking the awkward silence. "Hopefully tomorrow will be your least exciting day yet on the surface."

* * *

_That girl is nothing but a jinx,_ Simon couldn't help but think as he scurried through the tall grass in pursuit of Kamina and the mysterious figure he was fighting.

"Viral, huh?" he could hear his blood brother's boisterous voice ring out in the distance. "I hope your name doesn't mean that ugly mug of yours is contagious."

"Nngh!" Another person's labored grunts could be heard intermittently between Kamina's enthusiastic battle cries. Flashes of movement were now visible through the swaying leaves, and Simon caught a glimpse of a pale blonde figure being battered by his blood brother's nodachi.

"What's wrong, Beastman? Pig-mole got your tongue?"

"You've obviously got a lot of combat experience under your belt," 'Viral' finally spoke in a distinct, gravelly voice. "Where did you train, human?"

"School of Hard Knocks, beastie boy!" Kamina retorted, easily parrying a diagonal slice before returning a strike of his own that drew blood from the Beastman's arm yet again, nearly taking the entire forearm with the cut.

"Interesting," Viral said, clutching the wound as he leapt back from the fray. "I am unfamiliar with that academy. Perhaps your subterranean civilizations are more sophisticated than I have given you credit for..."

"IT'S A FIGURE OF SPEECH!"

As Simon finally advanced closely enough to see the fight clearly, he could see just how one-sided the whole affair was now - and completely in favor of his blood brother, at that. "Wow... he's really got this," he whispered to himself, half in awe and half in disbelief.

_Wow, I've really got this._ Kamina's thoughts mirrored that of Simon's as he continued to strike, his preternatural skill almost allowing him to be as much of a passive observer to the clash as Simon was. He was resolved never to back down in the face of a fight, yes, but this was arguably his first ever life-or-death duel of blades. He was fighting like it was his hundredth.

"Hey," Viral finally spoke again as another beat in their clashes provided a brief respite to his defensive parries. "You're... not alone..."

The Beastman's eyes tracked through the tall grass before squarely landing on Simon's hunched over silhouette, quickly followed by Kamina's vision. The young teenage boy for his part could only manage an alarmed squeak as he realized he had been discovered.

"What's the meaning of this, human-" Viral started, but his query was interrupted by a bullet's trajectory piercing through his shoulder with a bloody perforation. At the last second, realizing something was wrong belatedly attempting to dodge out of the way, Viral found his injuries sustained in the battle were now too sluggish and impaired to avoid the shot. Still, the Beastman remained exceptionally resilient, and sprung up in an instant despite having been winged by Yoko's long-distance shot.

"Dang," the vixen sniper muttered as she observed the Beastman rising to his feet, and began to reload.

"Dishonorable tactics, human!" Viral spat with a glare at Kamina, before dashing through the long reeds and off into the distance.

"Hey, I had you on the ropes!" Kamina protested as he saw the Beastman disappear into foliage. Kamina began pursuit for only a moment before halting - even injured, he could tell his quarry's speed was obviously superhuman. Too superhuman for any human to catch up to in a free run.

"C'mon, Simon," he said, trotting over to his blood brother and dragging him up to his feet.

Simon's voice finally managed something other than a squeak as he struggled to keep pace with Kamina. "I... okay. Where are we going, Bro?"

"Lagann Gurren," Kamina said. "Let's hurry. I got a feeling that Beastman's packing one of his own Gunmen close by."

"What makes you say-" Simon's question was drowned out as the telltale mechanical howling of a mecha starting up was heard.

"Just a hunch."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Two pilots are better than one, don't you think?

* * *

The shame was so great that Viral could barely maintain his concentration as he made his way back to Enki, his personal Gunman.

"Beaten by one of those primitive naked apes," he growled to himself. "The... _indignity...!_"

Now on top of everything, he was being forced to bring out Enki on the flimsiest of pretexts against this rag-tag bunch of humans. To say that it did not sit well with the Beastman would be a staggering understatement, but Viral was pragmatic as well as honorable. Selling his life cheaply out of stubbornness would be an insult to his position as the Commander of the Human Eradication Forces' Far East Theater, to say nothing of the Spiral King.

As he slid into the familiar controls of Enki and activated his sensor equipment, he pondered how he would deal with the human that had humbled him so thoroughly. Perhaps it would be possible to apprehend him for further questioning... it wasn't normally done, but it was well within his prerogative as a Commander of the HEF.

_Then I can challenge him to a rematch, and avenge my loss-_

Enki's stalking through the woodlands came to a halt as a massive Gunmen signature was showing up dead ahead. But no, this couldn't be right.

"_Two _Gunmen...? No, just one. No, there it is again!"

His readings clashed in a contradicting juxtaposition, forcing him to rely on his naked eyes in observing the approaching mecha. And what he saw...

"What."

It was for all the world a face within a face. The larger face accented the smaller, its piercing eyes forming jagged yellow eyebrows while its silver jaws framed the overall visage. Across its eyes two angular blades rested to form a facsimile of a pair of sunglasses. The rest of the body was towered with bulky reinforcement; Viral presumed this mecha was as much scavenged Gunmen parts as it was its original frame.

"So, you're the rebels responsible for the reports of stolen Gunmen that I've been recalled for?" Viral said, letting his voice carry through his own Gunman's speakers. "I should have guessed."

"Gunmen!? As if," Kamina retorted back through the speakers in his own mecha. "Our dual mecha's name is Lagann Gurren. With a drill that will pierce the heavens, and a sword to carve our destiny into the stars!"

"Dual...?" Viral shook his head at the nonsense being spouted by his opponent as the two Gunmen crashed into one another, metal face pressed against metal face in an informal contest of resolve.

"I don't know if we can do this, Bro," Simon said worriedly from the cockpit he was sharing with Kamina.

"What're you talking about, buddy?" Kamina gave him a reassuring glance before resuming his contest with the enemy Beastman. "After Leeron gave Lagann Gurren all those upgrades, we can take on any Gunmen that come our way!"

"But he looks a lot stronger than the ones we've taken on so far," Simon observed.

"Oh, don't let the fact that he's got two faces intimidate you, Simon. We've got two faces, too," Kamina said.

"Faces?" Viral said, uncomprehending for a moment before realizing what the other pilot was referring to. "Oh, that. It's traditional for a warrior to have a crested helmet."

"Hmm, interesting..." Kamina said, lurching the Lagann Gurren forward again only to be met with more than its equal in opposing force.

_This thing's bark is really worse than its bite,_ Viral thought as his Enki plowed forward, easily driving back the Lagann Gurren and sending it on the defensive.

"Ugh!" Kamina grunted, unable to resist the Gunmen's unstoppable advance.

"You acquit yourself well enough in person, but your mecha skills need improvement!" the Beastman taunted.

"Kamina! Simon!" Yoko's voice of concern was also cutting in through Lagann Gurren's speakers.

"Don't know if I'll ever get used to that," Kamina muttered as he tried to get over the startling sound of the teenaged girl in his cockpit.

"We're alright!" Simon answered her, considerably less perturbed.

"I can't get a clear shot on any of its vital points," Yoko said. "Do you have a plan or something, Kamina?"

"...or something, sure," the brash young man replied as he twisted himself forward again, only to be stopped in his tracks by the other Gunmen once again.

"Do you seriously think that's going to be good enough to even scratch me, you pitiful human?" Viral asked, the question almost as disappointed in his enemy's skills as it was triumphal.

_Looks like we've held it off long enough..._

"Shut up," Kamina whispered to himself at the familiar sensation of unbidden thoughts.

"What was that, Bro?"

"I... I said, we're gonna do this together, Simon!"

"Well, yeah, of course," Simon said. "You and me, together, Bro, no matter what comes our way..."

"No, I mean-" Kamina slid over to the left, leaving the right hand side of the cockpit vacant - and its control stick. "Grab ahold, Simon. We're going to pilot Lagann Gurren - together!"

"Wait, what?" Yoko interrupted, unable to contain herself at overhearing this.

"I... no, Bro, that's crazy!" Simon was forced to raise his voice not only at the unbridled terror he was experiencing at his blood brother's suggestion, but at the elevated frequency of impacts on Lagann Gurren now that its entire right side was rendered inert by Kamina's neglect.

"It doesn't matter if it's crazy, Simon," Kamina said with a disturbing calmness considering the rain of blows falling upon their mecha now. "It's our only shot. Besides, think about it. Two pilots are better than one, don't you think?"

"I don't think that at all!" Simon cried, but grabbed hold of the stick nevertheless. Maybe this would at least get Kamina to see reason, and get back in the fight-

There was little more time for Simon to ruminate, because as he felt himself finally take control, he knew that everything had changed.

"What the- what did you two DO?" Yoko said, her voice of concern tilting into outright fascination.

The expected crash of an impact on Lagann Gurren had faded into a nearly imperceptible thud. The significant battle damage just inflicted upon the mecha was stitching itself back to its original state. No, it was even better than when it had started.

"IMPOSSIBLE!" Viral roared, in disbelief as he witnessed all of the damage he had inflicted on the humans' Gunmen disappearing before his eyes.

"Combining!" Kamina declared. "Two manly souls smashing into one another to create something new and unique - even if heaven and earth denounce it as an impossibility!"

"But... all I did was grab the stick," Simon said.

"THAT'S Lagann Gurren!" his fellow pilot finished, more or less ignoring his younger partner's muted protestations. "Just who the hell do you think I am!?"

"Don't think a cheap trick or two is going to save you, humans!" Viral said in response, leaping back from the close quarters mecha combat to charge up the Enki's _raison d'etre _\- the awesome Particle Beam Cannon.

"See that, Simon?" Kamina pointed to the energy gathering at the pinnacle of the mecha opposite their own. "It's gonna try and use all that energy to fire on us using its helmet as a focus."

"Really? If you say so, Bro-OOOOOOOOH!" Simon let out a cry of alarm as Kamina wrenched his controls forward, forcing him to do likewise in tandem with the older pilot.

"Don't think about it, Simon," Kamina said as Lagann Gurren charged Enki in the face of obliteration. "Just act!"

"Al... alright!" Simon nodded his head with a newfound resolve. "I'll do it!"

Both pilots grit their teeth as they brought the mecha's arms to its chest, each gripping the opposite to take them up as weapons - for they were not connected, as it superficially appeared, but functioned as individual blades in their own right.

"Here we go, Simon! TWO SOULS BECOME ONE!" The blade held by the left arm of Lagann Gurren elongated and twisted into a very familiar and dramatically curved drill-blade pattern.

"A spark's instant becomes a flame that envelops the soul!" Simon chimed in as his own weapon lanced forward until it hardly resembled its original shape; the implement held by Lagann Gurren's right hand seemed to just be a massive drill with no bladed properties whatsoever.

"TWIN..."

With a leaping slice, Kamina's drill-blade cut forward in a sweeping arc and blew through Enki's defenses, severing the helmet from Enki's shoulders with a single shattering blow.

"...CONFLAGRATION..."

Following through with a rising lunge, Simon guided his drill upward to catch the helmet as it fell, twisting the still gathering energy around to face Enki and its stunned pilot.

"...COUNTERATTACK!"

The upper right half of Enki's helmet was shattered as the full force of the Particle Beam Cannon was unleashed on Enki, followed by the twin blows of Lagann Gurren's melee attacks. Every limb was completely shredded in instants, leaving the torso to fall to earth in an ungainly jumble of debris.

Lagann Gurren glinted in the noon sun, standing victoriously before placing its weapons back to form its distinctive sunglasses.

In the far-off distance, Yoko exhaled sharply as she lowered her weapon and marveled at the resultant carnage. Those two had just taken on the toughest Gunman she had ever borne witness to in her life... and won without showing so much as a scratch by the end of it.

"_And _we got ourselves a prisoner, Simon!"

"Prisoner!?"

* * *

"Rrrrrrrraaaaaaaaagghhhhhhhh!"

"He's scarier in person than the Gunmen, Bro," Simon whimpered as the people of Littner Village kept their distance from the bound and screaming Viral.

"Ha ha!" Kamina laughed, clapping his blood brother on the back. "Yeah."

"Are you crazy, Kamina!?"

"Crazy is just a word used to label the misunderstood geniuses of their time," Kamina said with a smirk that only slightly faded as he saw Yoko rapidly close the distance between them.

"No," she fumed, "crazy is a word to describe crazy people who do crazy things. And right now I'd say you're fitting the bill on every count. What are you _thinking__,_ taking that murdering Beastman into our midst!?"

"Yeah, uh, sorry, Bro," Simon said. "I don't really get it either, to be honest..."

"Listen," Kamina said, his tone taking on a much conciliatory quality at Simon's objection. "That Beastman bragged that he was the leader of the Human Eradication Forces in the Far East, or something. I'm willing to bet he's got a lot of vital information we can pump him for, and that's enough for me to say he should stay alive, for now.

"Your _chief_ agreed with me," Kamina added, trying not to laugh as Yoko's face blushed even redder than her hair. He knew she wouldn't go against Dayakka lightly.

"But, um, isn't it kind of dangerous, Bro?" Simon pointed over to Viral continuing to strain at his restraints, snapping his shark-like teeth and quite literally frothing at the mouth now at the villagers who had not yet fled from the terrible scene.

"Relax, buddy. Dayakka says he'll post heavy guard on the Beastman at all times. Heck, with luck we might not even suffer a single casualty!"

Simon whimpered as he tried to avert his eyes from Viral's continued tantrum.

* * *

"Ooh, you are a _big _one, aren't you?" Leeron cooed at the wreckage of the now defunct Enki, Viral's once proud personal Gunman.

"Don't you ever get tired of talking like that?" Kamina asked as he strode inside the mechanical hangar, examining his handiwork through crimson sunglasses.

"Like _what?_" Leeron asked with apparent sincerity.

"Never mind," Kamina said. "How's it looking?"

"Well, this muscley little guy is all kinked up, but he's a tough little fella." The mechanic beamed as he stroked a few of the parts idly. "I think we could definitely, with some serious work, get this to work for another pilot just like the other Gunmen."

Kamina nodded slightly. "Okay. Scrap it."

"W, what?" Leeron squealed, zipping up to Kamina and invading every crevice of the man's personal space.

"There will be other Gunmen," Kamina said slowly, resisting the urge to reach for his nodachi. "But this one's special. I want to combine it - with Lagann Gurren."

"_Combine? _I-" Leeron looked over to the ungainly fused face of the mecha Kamina had dubbed Lagann Gurren. "I'm not sure that will work. I'm not even sure how it's working right now, to be honest..."

"Just do it!" Kamina said as sternly as he could manage. "And make sure to use that helmet. I love that thing."

"Whatever you say," Leeron relented with an exaggerated shrug. "Oh! There's something you should know. I found something inside the systems of the Gunmen we captured."

"The location of the Beastmen home base?"

"Yes..." Leeron answered slowly, raising a perfectly waxed eyebrow at the response. "How did you know...?"


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Ten times zero is still zero.

* * *

A hushed atmosphere fell over Littner Village, quelling its typical hustle and bustle as night fell. Its typically sterile, sometimes even apprehensive silence was now infected with chatter, gossip that was barely restrained in its effervescence. Whispers made their presence known in every corner that would contain them, all echoing the same words that were on the tip of every living soul's tongue.

_Kamina. Simon. Lagann Gurren. _More than just idle chatter, the people had been infected with something far more contagious: hope.

Not that Viral could tell that anything was out of the ordinary.

"Don't these grubby mongrels ever cease their blathering?" He absentmindedly tested the limits of his bonds and the bedrock to which he was tethered, not even bothering to strain his muscles at this point. The blinding rage of Viral's initial imprisonment had subsided, at least for the moment. The emotion simmering within him now more resembled a controlled fire, not the raging inferno of his capture. It was an uneasy détente; despite Viral's calming he felt as if the slightest nudge - almost anything at all - could serve as a sufficient spark to reignite that fury. For the moment, such outbursts would not suit him. Slowly Viral took another breath, taking pains to block out all the external stimuli he could.

"He... hello."

Viral's eyes flew wide open as his brain numbly processed a sound he found himself unable to ignore. Not just a sound, but a voice. Not only a voice, but a voice addressing _him. _Viral's vision blurred for a few moments as his mind tried to bring the stimuli into focus.

"Viral, right...?"

A short and blue-haired adolescent human was standing in front of Viral. Standing _far_ too close to him. His attire was notably uncommon, draped in an oversized cerulean jacket wearing a set of protective goggles, and not much else. The boy fidgeted nervously - as if he, too, was aware of how terribly, terrifyingly bad of an idea it was of him to disturb this particular prisoner.

A shower of sparks had come to rain down on the tinderbox that was Viral's temper.

* * *

"You've really got Leeron wound up, Kamina," Yoko said as she took a seat next to Kamina atop the rocky bluff overlooking Littner Village.

"I know, right?" Kamina answered. He didn't spare a moment to glance in Yoko's direction, fixating instead on the starry night sky with his full attention. "You'd think anybody would be stoked to work on Lagann Gurren. The flagship mecha of the greatest heroes to ever grace the surface!"

"Modest as always, aren't you?"

The young man couldn't help but crack a grin and divert his attention to the girl beside him at that. "A legend being modest is being dishonest, the way I see it. A man sticks to the truth even if he's drowning in a sea of lies, even at the cost of his very life."

"I see," Yoko said, her voice quieting down as she pondered Kamina's words for a bit. "So then...

"Does that mean you're ready to tell the truth about who you _really _are, Kamina?"

"Give it a rest," Kamina snapped as his smile quickly vanished, replaced with a familiar scowl of irritation.

"I think you're-"

"You don't think _anything,_" Kamina interrupted harshly. "All you've got is a bunch of theories and no evidence. You've got even less than what you're wearing right now - what _is _that all about, anyway? Body insecurity as well as brain insecurity?"

"Don't change the subject," Yoko said with an air of defiance, but Kamina noticed she was visibly twitching.

"That unrelenting paranoia? Those pestering questions? They're not any more attractive than that big, oversized butt of yours."

Yoko opened her mouth to speak, but made no sound in the wake of Kamina's denigration. It was almost just as well; she no longer had anything left to say. Yoko couldn't remember a time when she had felt more humiliated than this moment. Not only had Kamina callously insulted her intelligence and degraded her as fat and unattractive, he had compounded the sniper girl's shame. For now, Yoko was certain that her shame was obvious and glaring on her face.

Something in the teenage girl told her to brush it off, like she had to so many other insults lobbed her way in the past. Something pleaded for her to show the same defiance she had grown accustomed to wearing on a daily basis, like a second skin. The thick skin that shielded her from the disparaging slights and snide comments. The thick skin that had become an inescapability of her life since her body had started developing. She heard, and knew she should don that thick skin once again.

But unlike so many times before, this time she would not - or could not - listen.

* * *

"Isn't it past your bedtime, child?" Viral asked Simon. His mere voicing of the question sent a shudder through the little digger, and it was all Viral could do to refrain from punctuating his terror with a mocking cackle.

"No! I mean, I don't have a bedtime anymore, ever since we left the village..." Simon trailed off with an unsure voice.

"The village?"

"Y, yeah. Bro and I aren't from Littner originally, we're from Giha Village."

The captive Beastman raised his flaxen eyebrow curiously. "By Bro, do you mean...?"

"Oh, s, sorry," Simon apologized, feeling weirdly chastened despite the knowledge that he was speaking to a creature dedicated to exterminating his very race. "Kamina. He's not my brother, um, biologically. Bro's my blood brother."

"And both of you are from 'Giha'?" _Heh. This may yield something of value yet._

The initial shame and humiliation of captivity had blinded Viral to any conceivable upside in his current situation. But now, talking with this boy, he was beginning to see the opportunity presented. To not only defeat, but to capture a Commander of the Human Eradication Forces meant that these humans - specifically, their leader - were truly exceptional. Gathering enough pieces of information on what made them so different could very well spell their downfall.

"Yeah, it's another pit, just..." The young boy swallowed as he seemed to hit upon the same realization as Viral. "I... I don't know if I should be talking about this with you."

_Damn,_ Viral thought, masking his disappointment behind a calm predatory stare. _Well,_ _I've got time to get him more talkative again._

"So, then. What _did_ you come here to talk about, little human?"

* * *

_Crap, this is bad. Crap, crap, crap._

Kamina's facade of unimpeachable confidence and bravado was swiftly shattered as he realized he was grappling with the most dangerous foe he had ever faced in his life.

A crying girl.

"H, hey," Kamina said, trying to reassure the teary-eyed Yoko with a painfully obvious fake laugh. "This is just a joke, right? I mean, yeah, it'd have to be. There's no way someone like you would be so weak as to-"

The brash leader of Team Gurren never had the opportunity to finish his sentence. rock-hard clenched fist plowed into his face. Kamina's head ballooned and swelled cartoonishly as a rock-hard punch plowed into his face. His face crumpled under the force of the clenched fist, knocking him off his feet, and sending him skidding away from his still bawling attacker.

"SHUT UP!" Yoko shouted in between choked sobs. With a furious start she ran at the prone Kamina and connected again, this time savagely kicking into his ribs with the points of her high heeled boots.

"YEOOOOOOOOOOOOW!" The sharp kick struck Kamina with such force as to leave him winded in an instant. The young man was barely able to scramble to his feet in time avoid the next rain of blows, and a keen awareness was dawning on him as the next assault closed in: he was in for the fight of his life. A fight on a precipice where the slightest misstep could mean falling to his death.

_I'm in serious trouble here__, _Kamina thought.

* * *

_I'm in serious trouble here, _Simon thought.

Why did he even come to talk with the Beastman, he wondered now? Let alone put himself in such a compromising position? Simon bitterly suspected that even if he were to attempt to leave at this point, his captive would be more than capable of killing him at this range despite his impressive array of restraints.

"I... I just wanna know."

"Know _what_?" Viral shot back without hesitation, keeping his interrogator on the defensive.

Paralyzed by fear, the only recourse Simon could think up was to simply answer truthfully. "I wanna know why you... why you want us all dead...!"

There was a pregnant pause in the aftermath of Simon's question... but it was soon replaced by bemused cackling.

"_Want _you all dead? Don't overestimate your importance to us Beastmen, human," Viral said with a menacing grin of shark teeth. "You're little more than vermin, fit only to be exterminated. But were it not for the wishes of the Spiral King? I doubt we would so much as notice you unless you got in the way."

"Spiral King...?"

"You humans really don't know anything, do you?" Viral remarked with disdain, but offered up no further explanation.

"I know enough," Simon said with a look of determination. "So... someone else, your king, wants us dead. So you don't care, then? Beastmen don't think for themselves?"

Viral lunged forward with inhuman ferocity as Simon finished his sentence.

* * *

Yoko lunged forward with inhuman ferocity as Kamina regained his balance, barely missing as the older teen ducked her attack and sidestepped to her rear.

"Hey, look, from this angle your ass doesn't really look that fat-"

"You... insulting... pig...!"

His chin took the punishment for his hubris as Yoko's leg snapped behind her, smashing into the loudmouth's jaw and causing him to squeal in a fit of pain as he staggered perilously close to the edge of the bluff.

"Aaaaaagh! That... really... hurts, Thunder Thighs...!"

"You two-faced, lying fraud..." The girl continued to seethe, most of her tears already shed. Kamina suppressed a shudder as Yoko turned around, fixating her bleary amber eyes on his defiant crimson ones with an unstoppable burning rage.

"Now, now," Kamina said with a patronizing wag of his finger. "Sticks and stones may break my bones..."

"YOU'RE NOT EVEN A REAL MAN!"

"..."

A silence like death swept over the landscape as Yoko's scream echoed through the desolate canyons.

* * *

A silence like death swept over the center of the village as Viral ended his lunge scant millimeters from Simon's face.

"Do not dare to insult the Beastmen - your _superiors,_" he hissed, each exhale of breath palpable on Simon's face. It was enough for Boota to poke his head out of Simon's jacket and audibly gag from the stench.

Far from being paralyzed by fear, however, if anything the Beastman was prodding Simon to snap out of his inaction.

"Superiors, huh," the digger said, raising his eyes up to lock with Viral's for the first time. "I wonder, then... how you'd explain me and Bro so easily defeating you and your Gunmen?"

Viral tossed back his sweat-matted hair and made a pronounced feline growl. "Watch your tongue, human..."

"I mean, aren't you supposed to be a Commander? Yeesh, if you were this easy, a few humans Gunmen shouldn't have any trouble taking on the Spiral King. I bet we'll could end his reign by winter."

"You shut your filthy mouth!" Viral howled, his mouth wildly erupting spittle in Simon and Boota's faces. "Such blasphemy will not be tolerated - and besides. None but a Beastman Commander may pilot a noble form of Gunmen such as Enki. Remember that, you worthless maggot of a naked ape. Don't even think about it...!"

"Oh, don't worry about that," Simon said with suddenly much less contentiousness. "Bro's just combining that thing with Lagann Gurren. So, we'll probably just take what we need and scrap the rest of it..."

Viral's mouth hung open dumbly as Simon trailed off. "...what?"

"I mean, um. That is, to say..." The young co-pilot of Lagann Gurren stuttered nervously as it dawned on him exactly what he had just said to his Beastman captive. Yet soon he also realized that the prisoner's hostile presence was diminishing. No, not diminishing; it had dissipated entirely.

"Enki..." Viral whispered sadly, fighting back tears.

With a blank, defeated expression on his face, Viral fell down to the ground with a quaking thud.

* * *

With a blank, defeated expression on his face, Kamina fell down to the ground with a quaking thud.

The impact was so devastating, and his resistance so nonexistent, that the perpetrator of the assault stopped in her tracks at the sound of it. "What's... the big... idea...?" Yoko huffed, trying to stand upright despite her aching muscles and heaving breasts.

"Not even a real man," Kamina repeated monotonously. The dull pain assailing his body for the moment was all but forgotten, drowned in the shadow of the aching emptiness he was feeling at her words.

Was this the hallmark of a man? To be guided by inexplicable knowledge, to fight with skill unearned and strength not his own? Was it hiding every premonition out of fear or stubbornness, even from those who might be saved by it? Or was it keeping dark secrets? Was it never so much as mentioning the remains of his father, his inspiration that he sought to transfer to others?

Was making girls cry - was _that _being a man?

"What are you doing?" Yoko demanded to the shell-shocked young man. She stood tall above him with her panting figure, stark rivulets of blood running between all the knuckles of her hands as she barked once more. "Get up!"

With a serene look in his eyes, Kamina laid still in a pose that resembled that of death itself. Then slowly, almost reluctantly, Kamina pressed his hands to the ground as if to stand - and then kicked Yoko's legs out from under her.

"Whaaaaaaa...!"

Her fall was quickly intercepted by the brash man's own strong and secure catch. Firm hands steadied Yoko as she felt herself positioned beneath Kamina, lowering them both to the rocky surface. In the bright moonlight Yoko could see well now the bruises she had inflicted on Kamina's body. The injuries were dark and dull, colors matching that of the tattoos criss-crossing his arms and shoulders.

"You're right." Kamina's voice was as authoritative and powerful as his grip was safe and gentle.

"I'm... huh?" Yoko idly wondered if this was some kind of trick. Against her will, her notice was drawn to her heart audibly thumping a mile a minute in Kamina's arms.

"You're right," Kamina repeated. "I'm sorry.

"For everything."

"I..." The nubile young girl's strength seemed to betray and abandon her as she tried to move in vain. Bereft of strength, she could only hold on weakly as the man grasping her was growing closer and closer with each interminable second.

"I said I'd pay you back ten times over. But..."

Yoko felt her heart catch in her throat as her face was drawn intensely close to Kamina's. A closeness that existed for only one unmistakable reason.

"Ten times zero is still zero. A man who isn't even a man can't hope to pay his debts with nothing."

"Kamina..."

A spark of cathartic ecstasy was shared between the two as firm, ruddy lips met a contrast of unparalleled softness. The tears streamed freely from Yoko again as her eyes squeezed shut, her tongue snaked out hungrily to meet every crevice of Kamina's, and her firm breasts pressed against the sinewy muscles of his torso.

The crimson vixen's taste as she invaded his mouth was pure honey to Kamina, and he felt as if he could almost drown in her sweetness. He craned her neck ever so slightly and pressed his thumb lasciviously at the nape of her neck. His nerves eagerly drank in her pulse, feeling its every throb in time with the rhythm of her kiss. Even her butt - that wonderful, curvaceous, beautiful butt - was fondled and caressed, clenched and squeezed, all with an undeniable appreciation that no amount of Kamina's teasing could possibly belie.

Yoko gasped and mewled slightly as Kamina broke off the kiss, all anger forgotten as she lost herself in the inimitable depths of those crimson eyes.

As for Kamina himself, he refused to have any regret as he savored the moment... even if it had stoked his most ominous premonitions yet.

_Damn. The more things change, the more they stay the same..._


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: If there were anything else important going on in the world, I'm sure we'd be involved.

* * *

"That's ten games to your zero."

The victorious move was quickly undone by a grotesque scorpion tail flipping the table. Metallic pieces glinted in the soft candlelight as they crashed down, scattering a mess across the floor of the otherwise pristine lounge.

"You're too hot-headed, Adiane," the simian Beastman said to the fuming female sitting opposite him.

"You're one to talk, Thymilph," Adiane retorted, still smarting from the unenviable string of losses as she retracted her tail back to her person, its bulk contrasting jarringly with the woman's luxurious garments and sensuously curved figure.

"True, I may be the General of Fire," Thymilph said, "but never forget: a controlled flame is far more effective than an untamed blaze."

"...you're right," Adiane said, closing her one good eye pensively. "You're always right, I suppose."

The other Supreme General grunted disapprovingly, standing to make the totality of his bulk completely evident to his slender peer. The mammoth girth of his gorilla physique and thick fur belied the reality of the muscle mass beneath; it was a fact the end of his hammer had delivered to many an unsuspecting foe. "Don't sell yourself short like that, General of Water," he admonished. "The best laid schemes of pig-moles and Beastmen often go awry; when that happens, rash action and impulsiveness will win the day over any amount of careful planning."

"You're right... again. Which isn't exactly helping, Thymilph."

"Gahaha. If you needed a counterexample, I believe that it was _me _who said that you and I would make a poor match together."

"Who says we're _not _poorly matched, General of Fire?" Adiane chuckled as she set the table back in its proper place and clacked her fingers rhythmically along the surface.

"I believe the location I could give of a certain Supreme General's scorpion tattoo would make a good argument against that claim. To start."

Adiane blushed furiously despite herself. Thymilph always knew just what to say to make her feel secure and cared for as well as exposed and vulnerable. She had convinced herself once that this was just a part of a long line of schemes, to manipulate one of her peers under her control. Yet with each passing day, she was becoming less and less sure of that conclusion...

"Geez, you brute. Can't even be content with seeing it, you have to talk about it out loud, too? What if one of your subordinates is listening in?"

The gigantic Beastman scoffed at his partner's insecurity. "If you're so worried about that, why don't we move these 'private meetings' to your Dai-Gunkai instead of my Dai-Gunzan?"

"No, no," Adiane dismissed the idea. "The other Supreme Generals are talking enough as it is..."

"Let them talk."

"And I... I _like_ being with you here," she quickly added in a voice just above a whisper. "Geez... what are you making me say here?"

"Supreme General Thymilph!"

The blushing embarrassment on Adiane's face quickly contorted into a lethal glare as one of Thylimph's lieutenants entered the room with a gasp. The General of Fire, for his part, merely hefted his massive warhammer and turned slowly to the intruder, hand twitching as if he would smash his subordinate like a bug at the slightest misstep.

"This had better be important," Thylimph growled.

"Yes, Supreme General Thymilph... and Supreme General Adiane," the lieutenant added, face beginning to bead with sweat as he realized he had walked into a more intimate situation than he was counting on. "It's... Commander Viral of the Far East Forces, sir."

"What? Has he returned with some important news?"

"No, sir, just the opposite. Commander Viral... has been captured by human insurgents."

"...WHAT?"

The Beastman lieutenant cringed as Thymilph's iron warhammer smashed into the floor, sending game pieces flying in every direction.

"That idiot," Adiane said, slouching back angrily in her seat. "Our Far East Forces Commander must have seriously lost his touch if he's been abducted by pathetic rebels.

"I fear it may be the opposite, Adiane," Thymilph said after a few moments of labored breathing, bringing his mighty weapon back to shoulder height. "If those humans captured Viral, they may actually be a force to be reckoned with. Especially if they're able to get him to crack and spill what he knows about our operations...

Adiane's disdainful expression was quickly replaced with one of some concern. "Are you proposing we launch an assault on the human rebels with the Dai-Gunzan, then?"

"No, there's no point in taking chances. Let's take your Dai-Gunkai... _and_ my Dai-Gunzan. Together."

"Interesting," Adiane said as she raised an eyebrow curiously. "This better not just be an excuse for us to hold a 'private meeting' on Dai-Gunkai."

"Gahahaha." Thylimph just smirked.

* * *

The beating sun cast the longest shadows of the day on the surface of the desolate wasteland. The dry, cracked ground existed in a state of unceasing stillness through the ebb and flow of the shifting shadows, and all was as usual... until the shadows and ground alike were shattered by a procession of four figures advancing across the badlands.

"Kiyoh, I'm hungry," the sole male in the group complained. A young man in his teens, he immediately struck an unbalanced appearance with his hair, a shock of yellow framed by brown sideburns. His three companions were all females, the eldest a buxom blonde, the middle sister a bespectacled brunette, and the youngest a hyper damsel with violet locks. The one thread all held in common, despite their differences, was their black attire befitting their moniker: The Black Siblings.

"You just ate an _hour _ago, Kittan," Kiyal said, snickering at her older brother.

"I was talking to _Kiyoh_, thank you very much," Kittan said with a glare at his snaggletoothed youngest sister.

"Calm down, everyone," Kinon interjected, riding up from behind on her warble runner, a kind of inverted sheepdog.

"Hmph!" Kittan and Kiyal huffed in unison.

"Yeah, let's not forget what's important," Kiyoh agreed, nodding her head in time with her bobbing steed's tail. "We're still tracking that sixteen-faced Gunmen variant, remember?"

"Yeah, but, I dunno, sis," Kittan said. "It's looking to me like the trail might have gone cold. We haven't seen any trace of them for days, and... it's not like there's a lot of places for it to hide." The leader of the Black Siblings turned his head to survey the wasteland from every angle, as if to underscore the point.

"Well, if we don't find them, we should probably do a resupply," Kinon mused, producing a list of items and a crudely made map.

"Yeah, maybe we can get some food," Kiyal added.

"I thought we 'just ate an _hour_ ago', Kiyal," Kittan said in a mocking voice.

"Where's our closest prospect, Kinon?" Kiyoh asked, ignoring her other bickering siblings.

"Hmm..." The middle sister traced the primitive map with her fingers, narrowing her eyes. "There is one place... looks like another faction of human rebels. They've held out for some time, so hopefully they won't be wiped out by the time we arrive. Plus, the rumor is their village was built on an old armory, so we might be able to restock on our explosive water stores."

"Ha ha, yeah! KABOOM!" Kiyal said excitedly.

"Not a bad idea," Kittan agreed. "Kinon, what's the village's name?"

"Hmm, looks like... Littner."

* * *

"Gimmy! Darry! Please, do not wander off!"

Rossiu's pleas fell on deaf ears as the two rambunctious twins frolicked in the distance, straying too close than Rossiu was comfortable with to the narrow boundaries of what the constituted Adai Village. Still, the expressionless youth was used to keeping his composure in situations like this. Murmuring a prayer to the face god, he followed as gingerly as he could, not trying to rile the children any more than they already were.

"Oh... Rossiu," Gimmy, the female twin said as she noticed their caretaker approaching. "Sorry, we got a little excited..."

"Yeah! Excited!" Darry exclaimed, nodding happily to his sibling. "Oh, wait, are we in trouble...?"

"Just... try to stay close, please. There will be enough upheaval soon enough."

"Oh, you mean when Ucom's baby comes soon?" Darry asked, holding Rossiu's hand along with Gimmy's as they began to head back to the rest of the villagers.

"Yes," Rossiu answered. _And while it may not be as momentous as when the Rite of Ascension is invoked,_ Rossiu thought to himself,_ there will still be a significant change to our village. If nothing else, we will once again be a single birth away from the Rite._

He sighed as he led the twins to tip-toe around the murky pond, their sole water supply. Careful rationing and straining was paramount to ensure disease was quelled, but in their conditions outbreaks were all but unavoidable given enough time. It was truly a miserable existence. Sometimes, like today, even Rossiu could admit that to himself. Those were the worst moments of all, however, because they would inevitably lead to another inescapable thought...

_If life is so miserable here... then why am I so sad that Mother is gone?_

Rossiu knew such sadness was a hair's breadth from outright blasphemy. The gods had bestowed a great blessing upon his mother, allowing her to ascend into the Celestial Lands and live an eternal life free from the miseries of their day-to-day existence. It was arguably Rossiu's realization of this divine truth that had spurred him to become such a devout acolyte of Father Magin and supplicant to the face gods.

And yet, there it was, creeping up again unbidden against his will. That most vile blasphemy against the gods of all: doubt.

_Mother... I want to follow you to the Celestial Lands, _he thought as he released the twins and watched as they scurried back to the village proper with cheery laughter. _I want to see the blessings of the gods with my own eyes._

Eventually, perhaps, he would have his chance to be so fortunate.

* * *

It was finally, mercifully complete.

Countless hours of thankless labor had led Leeron to this masterpiece, this unequaled pinnacle of Gunmen fused into a single, elegant form. Its limbs once blocky and awkward, the addition of Enki's frame now molded the mecha with muscular definition: rippling ivory metal now integrated seamlessly on the exterior of the original crimson and obsidian limbs.

The helmet was also now integrated into the composite mecha, as per Kamina's request. With its helm's original base more or less totaled in the conclusion of Enki's last fight, Leeron was forced to be even more inventive than usual. Ultimately, the conclusion would be to pair the helm with the existing face of the mecha, and the helmet was built into and combined with the original, massive composite face to create a more imposing visage than ever. Truly, this was not only a work of true genius, but a veritable piece of art unto itself.

"As if anyone else will even notice," Leeron muttered to himself. He tried to tamp the resentment as far down as he could muster; he had learned long ago that festering emotional complexes facilitated _terrible _wrinkle problems.

A few squeaks seemed to answer the eccentric mechanic's frustrations from beside him.

"Huh?" Leeron glanced to see a familiar pig-mole on his shoulder, looking very pleased with the handiwork on Lagann Gurren. "Well, at least you look happy with it, little fella. Oh, I'm sorry; it's Boota, isn't it?"

The furry brown creature nodded affirmatively.

"...you're as much of a mystery as these Gunmen, aren't you, cutie?" Leeron marveled at the creature's apparent sentience. "Coupled with all the secrets Kamina is holding back, and I think we've got ourselves a regular trifecta."

Boota shook its head at this last statement, giving out a high-pitched sound that Leeron could almost swear sounded like a growl, if it weren't so cute.

"_You've_ got an opinion on Kamina too, cutie? My, my. So, indulge me, since I probably won't be delirious enough in the future to ask a pig-mole: you think that man is who he says he is?"

The pig-mole shook his head vehemently.

"Guessing that's a no, then. So, you think he's too big for his britches, or he's putting up a brave facade, or he's hiding something, or...?" Leeron trailed off as he watched the pig-mole respond negatively to each and every supposition.

"...or you just don't think... he's... Kamina?"

Leeron's eyes widened as he watched Boota pause for several seconds before giving a single, small nod to agree with the gaunt technician.

* * *

It was fairly late when Kamina returned to his and Simon's room in Littner Village. It was a spartan accommodation, even by the standards of their former dwellings in Giha Village, with little more than a sprinkle of bedding and a blanket in an otherwise bare room. The two members of Team Gurren had made the space their own as much as they could despite the sparse decor, mostly with crude drawings of their logo for Team Gurren.

Kamina could see it was one of those drawings that Simon was idly scratching out as he quietly peeked through a crack in the door.

"What, so you're still up? Dang, it was a waste to try and be quiet!" Kamina complained, kicking open the door with an exaggerated slam. He paid no heed to the cries of children being roused from their sleep from farther down the hall as he strode in.

"Oh, yeah... sorry, Bro. I had kind of a long night," Simon said vaguely, continuing to scratch out his illustration without taking his eyes off the wall.

"Yeah, same here," Kamina said, not willing to be any more specific than Simon had been. _This is going to cause problems, but that can wait... for tonight. _

"Well, we've got a long day ahead of us, so try and get some sleep, Simon," Kamina continued.

"Oh, yeah." Simon perked his head up to turn to his blood brother. "Leeron said something about having located the Gunmen base, didn't he? You wanna go take it out, don't you, Bro?"

"Yes... but not now," Kamina said, after some hesitation.

Simon stopped drawing completely to turn around and face his older friend with a look of complete confusion. "I don't understand. Why not now?" It wasn't as if Simon was chomping at the bit to go throw himself into another life-or-death confrontation, but to not jump at a chance like this was decidedly _very _un-Kamina.

"We've still got things to do here," Kamina said. "We're going to build our own base. A base where Team Gurren carves its mark of destiny," he continued excitedly, gesturing at the crude logos embellishing the room.

"A base that'll attract more Beastman raids like goat-moths to a flame," Simon added worriedly.

"Yeah! We won't need to take the fight to them, Simon. We can wait for those Gunmen bastards to come to us. And we'll protect everyone. With your drill and Lagann Gurren, we'll crush them all with the fighting spirit of _real_ men!" Simon could not help but notice the palpable intensity of Kamina's emphasis on the word 'real' as he spoke.

"I don't really have a problem with it, Bro," Simon said. "But I can't help but worry that we might be missing out on something by just waiting for them to come to us."

"Hey, don't sweat it, Simon," Kamina replied confidently. "Trust me on this.

"If there were anything else important going on in the world, I'm sure we'd be involved."


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9: She's my woman. Not yours.

* * *

Dayakka's lips quivered slightly as he waited for the last stragglers to join the assembled crowd at the center of Littner Village.

_There's more than I expected,_ the leader of Littner thought, scratching his head in mild surprise. It had been long indeed since he had seen the full assembly of his charges, with good reason; it was not often that the entirety of the populous was called to attend a town meeting of any sort. The decentralized operation of their enclave, while inconvenient at times, was ultimately a matter of necessity. The day-to-day subsistence of the villagers was an uncertain affair even at the best of times, necessitating large and continual allocations of manpower to resource gathering. There were also the vital duties of those individuals assigned to sentry watch, which required operating in continuous rotation from daybreak to sundown. These circumstances left only a small window of time after dark in which the entirety of the villagers could be addressed effectively, and Dayakka was loathe to infringe on what little time his people had to themselves.

And yet now due to circumstances beyond his control, he would have to. A nearly imperceptible sigh escaped the brawny man's lips.

"Hey, pops, I hope you can put on a better face than that when it's time for your speech. You look like you're ready to give a eulogy at a funeral."

Dayakka could not help but let out a small yelp of surprise as Kamina rubbed elbows with him, grinning from ear to ear behind his trademark sunglasses. "I'll try," he said softly as his mouth continued to quiver nervously. "But... please understand, Kamina. What you're asking of us will mean the biggest change this village will have ever seen."

Kamina raised an eyebrow as he lowered his angular sunglasses to meet Dayakka's gaze. "Don't tell me you're having second thoughts now, old-timer."

"No, no, not at all," Dayakka said. "This is the best course of action for all of us... I think. It's, uh, just gonna be necessary to help everyone else see the same way."

"That's where you and me come in, pops," Kamina said, nodding to himself in apparent satisfaction. "You warm 'em up, and I'll clinch the deal. So..."

"So?" Dayakka repeated in confusion.

"So get out there, ya big lug!" Kamina exclaimed as he pushed the chief up onto the stage to the cheers of the assembled throng.

Dayakka could scarcely even recognize the congregation celebrating around him. Most of the faces were familiar, to be sure, but the crowd was dotted with plenty of individuals he had never seen before. Littner had always had the occasional transplant, but this kind of growth was surely unprecedented; perhaps word of their recent victories had spread more widely than he had anticipated. But even the more familiar faces were almost alien to Dayakka, so filled they were with high spirits all too rarely seen amidst the grind of scarcely repelled Gunmen attack after Gunmen attack.

He cleared his throat, and almost on cue a hush fell over the assembled, eager to hear what new announcement their leader had prepared.

"People of Littner Village," Dayakka spoke in a halting cadence. "Today, we will begin a new era in our village's history. Today, we will fight back against the Gunmen...

"...with our _own _Gunmen."

The chief of Littner Village took a short breath as the villagers applauded, preparing to continue, only to be pushed aside as Kamina took the stage right behind him.

"Alright, that's enough, pops!" the younger man said to the greeting of deafening cheers. "I'll take it from here."

* * *

Yoko self-consciously glanced around the crowd for what felt like the hundredth time as Kamina continued his speech, hoping that no one was noticing her staring too intensely as he gave his impassioned speech... or noticed her conspicuously trying not to gaze_ too_ much, either.

_Boy, he really is a hassle, that's for sure__,_ she thought with a furrow of her brow. Still, insecurity issues aside, she had to admit... Kamina had a surprisingly detailed plan. Strategies for defeating Gunmen raids. A methodology of hijacking enemy Gunmen for Littner's own use. A plan of consolidating gains and eventually transform Littner Village into a full-fledged city. He had thought about this. More than she would have thought possible in the short time he had been above-ground.

"And we'll call our city a new name, a name that will inspire the rest of humanity: Gurren City," Kamina finished, shaking his fist and pounding his chest to the oohs and aahs of his adoring listeners. "A civilization founded on the principles of Team Gurren and their mighty leader, Kamina! And anyone here who wants to pitch in and help get this done? Well, you can join and be a part of Team Gurren, too!"

"He's got them eating out of the palm of his hand, wouldn't you say? Present company _included,_ it looks like."

Yoko jumped a little as she recognized the voice of Leeron behind her. _How does he _do _that? _she wondered, trying to keep her composure as the next wave of cheers went up from the crowd.

"What? You're not convinced?" Yoko asked, brushing back her luscious red mane to give Leeron a skeptical frown.

"Oh, quite the opposite," Leeron said. "Though I don't think anyone's taken the time to reflect on how much work it's all going to make for little old me..."

* * *

Viral's countenance grew darker and darker with each applause line delivered by the naked ape he had fast grown to loathe more than anything other of his kind. It was not enough that this filth had bested him in personal combat. That he had bound a disciple of the Spiral King in chains like a mere animal, an animal now forced to bear witness to this infuriatingly self-aggrandizing display of humans, just out of retribution's reach. Or even that the human had dared to _defile _his personal Gunman by dismantling it and integrating it into his personal mockery of the Spiral King's creations.

No, now the _de facto _leader of these humans dared to challenge the Spiral King's divine authority on top of everything else. To make aspirations at imitating the glory of Teppelin was a crime so grave that Viral had never imagined it even as a concept. And no matter how fervently he told himself that what the humans sought to do was an impossibility, a kernel of doubt remained nestled in his brain, a doubt the Beastman found impossible to dislodge no matter how he tried.

Perhaps the humans were not simply pathetic mongrels. Perhaps he was _not_ going to escape this hellish imprisonment. Perhaps Viral's loss had set in motion a chain of events that would presage the downfall of all the Spiral King had built. It was this last possibility that was nearly too much for the imprisoned Beastman to bear, and he snarled impotently with the thought as every round of applause cascaded through the assembled humans.

* * *

Simon's eyes shone with pride as Kamina concluded his speech and stepped down from the stage with a flourish of his cape.

"That was amazing, Bro!" he shouted over the rising din and grabbed his blood brother's attention.

"Yeah, it was, wasn't it?" Kamina's response was one of uncharacteristic understatement, and for some reason his words were giving Simon a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as the two's eyes met in the middle of the surrounding crowd.

_I've been putting off making this change for long enough, _a familiarly unbidden thought crept into Kamina's head.

"Shut... up..."

_You'll thank me later. But this has to be done.  
_

"No..."

"Bro? What's wrong?" Simon gave Kamina a puzzled look as he could see the older teen's eyes beginning to bulge seemingly out of nowhere. His muscles were shaking with a subtle violence, accompanied by the unmistakeable slickness of sweat oozing from every pore on his body. Most disturbing of all, Kamina seemed to be cursing some unseen individual under his breath, just at too low a volume for Simon to be able to make out distinctly.

_You'll thank me later. I hope._

"...Simon." Kamina's voice was turning stilted and robotic all at once, as if he were struggling to get the words out.

"Mmm?"

"Kamina! Simon!" Yoko's voice interrupted the two as she pushed through the crowd with an enthusiastic bounce in her step that well-matched the excited atmosphere of the crowd. As she reached the center of the room, however, she felt a pall of apprehension come over her as Kamina turned away from Simon and seized Yoko by the arm.

The noise of the crowd abruptly faded to a quiet stillness as Yoko was drawn up to Kamina and, with deliberate exaggeration, the leader of Team Gurren pressed his lips to hers for all the assembled onlookers to see.

"Mmph!" All Yoko's suppressed anger, her subsided fury, and her myriad reservations came roaring back with a vengeance as the young girl felt herself being made the object of countless stares, without even so much as a thought to her consent. Her eyes widened as she struggled against Kamina to no avail as he held her in his grip like a vise, continuing the kiss without a shred of the tenderness that had won her over the night before. With a perfunctory conclusion to the act, Kamina released Yoko and turned his attention back to Simon - who, predictably, was trembling with tears in his eyes as he struggled to comprehend what he was seeing.

"You get it, Simon? She's my woman. Not yours," Kamina said, kneeling down to meet his blood brother at eye level.

The blue-haired youngster audibly whimpered as Kamina's face filled his vision. "Wh..." Simon's voice cracked, trying to find the right words, any words, to help cope with what he was being forced to deal with. "Why...?"

"Because I know you like her," Kamina replied mercilessly. "And I wanted to crush that fantasy before it could grow any bigger."

Kamina might as well have sucker-punched Simon in the gut, as far as the little digger was concerned. No, this was far worse than any physical punishment he could have received, on second thought. Bruises and scars would heal, but this psychological trauma - and from his beloved blood brother, no less - was too much for Simon to bear.

"N, no, I..." Simon started, hoping to save face with at least a token denial, but Kamina was having none of it.

"Don't try to deny it. You like her. No... you _really _like her. She's the kind of girl that you could think about marrying, right. Give it up, Simon - so would pretty much anyone else!" Kamina's breath felt like a predator's to Simon, hot and suffocating as he inched closer to continue his venom-filled diatribe. "Don't tell me you didn't think she was out of your league, Simon!? C'mon, _look _at her. That's not for a little boy like you to have."

Yoko could only stand listlessly as she watched the nearly incomprehensible scene, the sight of Kamina tormenting his closest and dearest friend, and all without the slightest hint of remorse. She stood immobile as if paralyzed as her thoughts became consumed with a single question, a question that repeated itself again and again with each passing moment of her watching the scene unfolding in front of her:

_Have I really fallen for such a monster?_

The torturous bullying was mercifully ended as finally Simon opened his mouth to release an ear-splitting shriek.

"You... you are NOT my blood brother! You're not! You're not! You're not!" Simon repeated the words over and over, wailing with a nearly religious intensity even as he turned tail and fled the scene as fast as he could manage. Even long after he had careened into the crowd and disappeared entirely in a stumbling escape, Simon's words continued to echo, their refrain seeming to damn the man now standing alone in the center of his once-adoring crowd.

A crowd that now appraised him in total silence.

* * *

"Heh heh heh." The only sound that remained was imperceptible, the cackle of the imprisoned Beastman laughing at the scene he had just witnessed.

"How delightfully rich," Viral rasped as he bared his shark grin, almost disbelieving at the gift the humans had just dropped into his lap. "Looks like I'll be getting out of here sooner than I thought."


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10: There's no tomorrow for me if I don't fix this today.

* * *

"The name's Kittan! The one and only fearless leader of the Black Siblings, dontcha know?"

The sentry guarding the entrance stared blankly at the boasting blonde presenting himself for admission into Littner Village - no, Gurren City, he had to keep reminding himself. Even if it wasn't quite living up to its billing yet.

"So, just Kittan? No last name or anything else like that...?"

"It's not _just _Kittan, bub!" the dark-clad man huffed. "I said Kittan, the one and only fearless leader of the Black Siblings. Don't you bumpkins know anything!?"

"It's Kittan Bachika," a glasses-wearing brunette interjected with embarrassment. "I'm Kinon Bachika, that's Kiyoh Bachika, and there's Kiyal Bachika," she continued, pointing to herself, a blonde-haired girl, and a violet-haired girl respectively.

The sentry smiled appreciatively as he jotted down the information. _These babes are totally wasted on this dude, _he thought as he waved the group through into the city limits.

"J, just remember!" Kittan said as his three companions attempted in vain to usher him out of earshot. "We're the Black Siblings! Hunters of all things Gunmen! You best not forget our name when I see you next time!"

"Honestly, Kittan," Kiyal said. "Could you try not to make a total fool of yourself on our first day here?"

"I thought that went quite well, all things considered," Kiyoh spoke up with a pleased voice as she tied the four steeds trailing her to a set of nearby stables.

Kiyal pondered that assessment for a moment. "Oof, wow, I guess you might be right. Our older brother can be _really _abrasive on his off days."

Kittan's excitement was very rapidly devolving to a state of abject dejection. "Wow, geez, sis. Don't any of you back me up anymore?"

"When it matters, Kittan-" Kinon started, but her words caught in her throat as she turned a corner and saw the unlikely centerpiece of the fledgling city.

"G, G, G, Gunmen!" Kittan cried in alarm as he also spotted what Kinon had: a gigantic metal figure looming ahead. He dived for the closest bit of cover he could reach, fumbling for his explosives in a panic and steeling himself for combat...

...before it dawned on him that he was the only person panicking in the shadow of the immobile mecha.

"Geez, Kittan," Kinon said as she trotted over to his position, "weren't you paying _any _attention when I was telling everyone about the recent reports coming out of here?"

"I think it's pretty obvious that I _wasn't,_" Kittan replied sullenly. The young man was plainly shaken up as he struggled to his feet, and reading his mood Kinon decided to dispense with any lectures. Instead, she decided to focus on getting the eldest Black Sibling up to speed.

"That right there is Lagann Gurren. It's the personal Gunman of Kamina, the man leading the fight against the Beastmen here."

"Kamina...!" Kiyoh and Kiyal swooned in unison.

"Hey!" Kittan groused. "What's that guy got that I ain't got?"

"A city."

"An army."

"Not to mention that big Gunman."

"Oh, and probably more adoring fans than he knows what to do with..."

"Okay, I get the picture!" Kittan shouted to quell the praises his fellow siblings were showering on the rebels' leader.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Kittan," Kiyal 'apologized' with a mocking tone. "I didn't realize you were _jealous._"

"I'm not jealous!" Kittan protested. "You don't think I can do that stuff? I'll show you all, just watch!"

"Oh, you think so?" The Black Siblings were uniformly startled as an affectionately effeminate voice belonging to an even more affectionately effeminate man interrupted their conversation.

"Sorry, but I couldn't help but overhear," the man continued apologetically with a small smile. "The name's Leeron. I'm Team Gurren's Chief Intelligence Officer and Mechanic. And I just _had_ to stick my nose into your beezwax when I heard this strapping young man's interest in joining Team Gurren." Kittan felt a weirdly disturbing premonition as the newly introduced mechanic sauntered up to him, a premonition that was shortly confirmed as the lithe man slid behind his back. "Ooh, yes... I think you'll do _just _fine."

"You really think so?" Kiyoh asked, oblivious to Kittan's cries of alarm.

"Oh, absolutely," Leeron replied with a coo as he embraced the bottle blonde by the shoulders with impossibly slinky fingers. "Strong, virile bodies like these are an absolute must-have for hijacking your first Gunman."

"H, hijacking!?" Kittan said, trying to pay attention even as his body was forcefully kneaded against his will.

"Of _course_, silly. What, did you think we built them ourselves? As if... for now, anyway," Leeron said. His voice trailed off meaningfully, as if he had abruptly stumbled onto a most promising idea.

Kiyal hopped up and down excitedly. "You're all even cooler than I thought! You hear that, Kittan?" she said, meeting the worried eyes of her eldest sibling. "He says even someone like you can get one of those Gunmen if you try! I mean, there's no way it'll be on the level of _that__," _she continued, pointing up to the titanic mecha now identified as Lagann Gurren, "but don't let that get you down!"

"Oh, I very much doubt his Gunmen will be less useful than Lagann Gurren..."

The four Black Siblings all raised a quizzical eyebrow at such a statement coming from an officer of Team Gurren. "Hey, that don't make no sense!" Kittan protested. "You telling me that gigantic Gunman isn't good for anything?"

"Oh, no," Leeron said, shaking his head pensively. "It's saved this city more than a few times, actually. And even now its mere presence has contributed to deterring several Gunmen raids on Gurren City. But it..."

"But it what?"

"...but it just doesn't do very much now."

* * *

"You useless hunk of junk!"

Kamina's voice reverberated loudly in the cockpit's confined space. Uselessly he thrashed back and forth against the controls once more - trying something, anything, to get Lagann Gurren moving again.

_It hasn't worked since that day. What makes you think today will be any different?_

"Shut up!" Kamina roared to himself. He released the controls and began took out his frustration on the console, bashing his fist hard enough to break bones. "This is your fault to begin with!"

He was beyond caring what someone else might think if they saw the mighty leader of Team Gurren ranting to himself in this dark room. He was beyond caring about almost anything. His closest friend, the girl he cared for, even his very free will... it all seemed to be hopelessly out of his control. All he had left, all he could think of, all he could cling to, he felt, was in this cockpit.

Lagann Gurren. Operated by Simon's core drill. Built around the mecha Simon had discovered. Reinforced by the Gunmen of their defeated foes. A symbol for Gurren City. A beacon of hope for humanity.

Lagann Gurren - he had helped to create that. No matter how much his life was otherwise falling apart around him, it was up to him to get it to work.

"A man doesn't know when to quit, even if everyone else tells him he's lost!" Kamina forced another half-hearted war cry and spun on his core drill once again. Once again, barely a fraction of the spiral gauge filled before the mecha entered yet another cataclysmic shutdown.

"Work, dammit!"

"Kamina, maybe you should call it for today." A wary voice came in over the speakers in Lagann Gurren with a crackle. Even in his tantrum, Kamina could identify it as belonging to a timid engineer named Tetsukan. "We can try again tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Kamina balked. "Just who the hell do you think I am!?"

"I... I just..." Tetsukan seemed loathe to contradict Team Gurren's leader, but persisted. "What's one more day, huh, Kamina?"

"You... just... don't... GET it, do you!?" Kamina pressed forward on the Gunman's levers once more, lunging so intensely this time that his head smashed directly into the spiral gauge at the cockpit's front. Blood gushed from his crown as the impact created a terrible gash of a wound; Kamina could hear Tetsukan audibly gasping at the injury as he wrenched his blood-soaked head back in front of the display camera.

"There's no tomorrow for me if I don't fix this today."

* * *

"Man, it sounds like we walked in on some serious drama, girls," Kittan said as he and his three sisters continued to follow Leeron on his tour of the aspiring city.

"Tell me about it," Leeron agreed, bracing for the next barrage of questions.

"So Kamina kissed her right in front of Simon?"

"Even though he knew his blood brother had a crush on her?"

"Did _she _know he had a crush on her?"

"Beats me." Leeron rolled his eyes at the predictable gossipy interest the three women were showing in the love triangle of individuals they had never even met, but he had to admit it was understandable. More importantly, it was critical to understanding the situation on the ground, even if he would prefer otherwise. "The bigger issue is how it divided this nascent rebellion before it could even really start. Sure, there were some people who didn't want to follow a person who'd treat his best friend like that..."

"Totally!" Kiyal chirped angrily. "What a jerk, to act that way!"

"...but then there were even more of us who figured it doesn't really matter how Kamina acts. If he can lead us to finally saving our families from the Beastmen, then... well, they don't care much how he behaves otherwise."

"I do have to admit," Kinon said, nodding her head at the dizzying array of construction projects that seemed to pop up around every new corner, "this is a more advanced society than we've ever seen before now. You figure something Kamina has to be doing is working." She pursed her lips sympathetically at the fuming Kiyal. "Regardless of whatever other shortcomings he may possess."

"True," Leeron concurred, "he's inspired our people to use the Beastmen's own Gunmen against them. That's set advancements into motion that we could have never dreamed of before he took command. Even if Lagann Gurren never moves again, the sense of security it gives the people just to see it there... well, you won't hear me complaining, that's for sure."

"Now hold on just a minute, you never explained that part," Kittan said. "_Why _doesn't that thing work anymore?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, rooster-hair," Leeron said, his nickname prodding more than a few giggles from Kittan's siblings. "It hasn't worked ever since those three had their falling out. Draw your own conclusions from that."

"Wait. Those _three?_"

"Oh, yes. Yoko was possibly even _more _upset with Kamina than Simon, if you can believe it."

* * *

_Never expose yourself. _It was Yoko's mantra.

Sure, there were the occasional snickers from those who made crude remarks about the way she dressed. But it wasn't about how one dressed, not really. It was a sniper's mantra. She did wield the most powerful weapon Littner possessed. She was the best shot the people had to offer. But the secret was in more than just a precise aim. After all, her opponents were more than human. Their reflexes were quite literally superhuman, capable of dodging an incoming projectile even after it had left her gun's barrel. To beat the Beastmen, you had to be more than a crack shot. You had to make sure they never even saw you - until it was too late.

_Never expose yourself._ Yoko's thoughts refrained as she brooded in the silence of the most isolated section in the newly christened Gurren City. She did not ruminate over her mantra because she had failed in the sniper's creed. Not this time, at least. But the words had always come with a dual meaning to Yoko. A meaning she had recently abandoned... and paid for bitterly with the sting of betrayal.

_How could I have been so stupid?_ Of course a man like that, a man with something to hide, would use seduction to manipulate her into submission. Of course a man like that, a man without a heart, would encourage her to open her own and expose herself: mind, body, and soul. Of course a man like that, a man who was not even a man, would use her and discard her at the earliest convenience.

_I am not a prop to be used as a weapon against innocent bystanders. _She had never consented to putting their dalliance on display for the world to see. She had never agreed to be a pawn in hurting the feelings of a young boy. A boy whose only crime was to dare to have a crush on a girl.

Yoko's boots kicked up dust as her pacing intensified. The worst part, of course, was that she knew Kamina was indispensable to the insurgency. Even in the face of her most intense disdain, Yoko would never abandon her dedication to fighting the Beastmen menace. And so she continued to work under Kamina, a position that came with a constant disgust at both him and at herself.

Except when she came here.

Here, it was quiet.

Here, she could clear her mind.

Here, she could be alone.

"You must think about something pretty important when you come here, huh?"

And then the bound prisoner spoke, snapping Yoko out of her thoughts as if she had been awakened from a dream. It was so easy to forget, in this isolation, that this isolation had been created from a purpose. Isolation in civilization was an unnatural phenomenon, created by the wide berth people had given to create this informal prison.

She was not alone.

The teenage girl shook her fiery mane and shot the Beastman a dirty look, and he bowed his head deferentially in return. "If you want me to be quiet so you can pretend I'm not here again, I will," it said.

Yoko narrowed her eyes... and then hung her shoulders wearily, unable to muster the energy for an angered retort. "No... that's okay."

There was another long pause before the Beastman's clinking chains broke the silence once again. "Is... it something you want to talk about?"

Yoko pondered the question, and took a seat as she met the enigmatic catlike eyes of the restrained prisoner. Had she not been so overcome with exhaustion, she might have considered her mantra as she opened her mouth to speak again. The same mantra that was now mockingly running through Viral's thoughts.

_Never expose yourself._

* * *

"I bet I can get it to work!" Kittan shouted defiantly, pointing up to the statuesque figure of Lagann Gurren._  
_

"I don't think that would be the best idea," Kiyoh said, shaking her head worriedly.

"What, you don't think I can do it?"

"I'd say that would be besides the point," Leeron said. "I doubt you'd even be able to try without getting into it with Kamina... and I would not recommend that, considering everything I just said about the chain of command here."

"Ugh, Kamina, Kamina, Kamina," Kittan complained. "What's so great about that guy, anyway? Seems like he's just a bunch of talk who got lucky once or twice. I bet I could do ten times the job he's doing!"

Kittan's fellow Black Siblings looked worriedly at their elder brother - but Leeron only demurred. "You may have your chance, eventually..."

"Eh?" The hotheaded young man stopped short in his boasting and took a double take at Team Gurren's lead mechanic.

"Not that you should be worried about that now," Leeron said with a twinkle in his eye, before rounding one last corner - revealing a mountain of dirty clothing wafting an almost unbearable stench. The Black Siblings all screamed in horror as Leeron winked. "Newbies get put on laundry duty. Or didn't I mention that?"

Leeron promptly scooted back as far as he could, leaving the four crestfallen siblings with their task. "Go on, honey bunches, if you're serious," he said with an impish smirk. "Then, we'll see if you've got what it takes to hijack a Gunman."

* * *

Boota tried again in vain to comfort Simon as he nuzzled against his neck. The pig-mole transmitted what little warmth he could muster to the shivering youth, but it did not help much in the bitter cold of the dark storage chamber.

Most of Simon's days were spent here now. Boota was grateful for the fortune of this being a food pantry, at least. It was an open question if the heartbroken human would have been able to muster up the will to eat, had he holed up in a place where sustenance was not so readily available.

Simon's first few days had been predominantly spent on anguished sobs. After a certain point the young teen found he could no longer muster even the strength to cry - yet his pain did not dull. If anything, it was far worse, as without the comfort of tears Simon was forced to grapple with the reality of his situation with the full breadth of his faculties.

_**Because I know you like her. **_The image of his beloved blood brother humiliating him for the entire village to see was seared into his mind. His cold and merciless stare bored into Simon's soul every time he closed his eyes. And whenever Simon's own thoughts quieted, he could hear the heartless rationale for Kamina's actions. It echoed endlessly, ensuring that the young teen could not enjoy even a moment's respite from his misery.

_**I wanted to crush that fantasy. **_One thing was now obvious to Simon, after having been forced to reflect on his feelings. He had a crush on Yoko. Even considering the short time since they had met, the emotions were unusually pervasive, if not particularly well-formed. Indeed, he had a feeling that even under the best of circumstances, his discovering Kamina and Yoko's relationship would have made for a distressingly painful revelation.

_So why... why did Kamina feel the need to be so cruel? _Over and over Simon racked his brain for answers, and each time he could come up with... nothing. No motive. No reason for Kamina's actions. And that left Simon with only one remaining possibility, perhaps the most harrowing thought of all:

_He did it because he hates me._


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11: Can't say I blame you, little guy.

* * *

_So. These are the Celestial Lands.  
_

Rossiu attempted a mirthless laugh, but could only materialize a croak. That was at least fitting, he figured, considering his dour personality; laughter had become an emotional expression all but alien to the devout adolescent. He felt that he should be pounding this damned and dessicated soil for all he was worth, to tear the garments signifying his faith and shriek to the heavens in anguish at their lies. Yet Rossiu's countenance remained as inexpressive as ever.

A paucity of feeling was not to blame for this inhuman tranquility, Rossiu knew. His subdued, low-key temperament had once been the cornerstone of his somber devotion to the gods. Now it served a far more immediate, visceral - and, now that he could be honest with himself, legitimate - purpose.

"Hey, hey, Darry! I found another new rock!"

"Oh, wow! What color is it, Gimmy?"

"This one's yellow, but it's _real _sparkly this time. I've never seen anything like it."

"It must be a gift from the gods, Gimmy! Don't you think so, Rossiu?"

"I..." Rossiu's voice caught in his throat as the two kids' conversation put him on the spot. In an amazing bit of irony, the twins had remained blissfully ignorant of their dire situation, despite it being the direct result of their exile from Adai Village. When Ucom's wife unexpectedly gave birth to triplets, bringing Adai's total population to two over the maximum of 50, it seemed to Rossiu to be a curious bit of convenience that the two orphans furthest removed from the rest of the village would be the ones to ascend to the Celestial Lands. Not only would their eternal bliss be assured, but it would also mean the smallest amount of disruption for the village as a whole.

But that did not mean that it would mean the smallest amount of disruption for Rossiu. The acolyte had taken it upon himself to serve as the unofficial caretaker for Gimmy and Darry, spending night and day making sure that they learned and were cared for when they would otherwise be neglected by the city as a whole. He remembered what it meant to be an orphan, what it felt like after his mother had ascended to the Celestial Lands, before Father Magin had taken him under his wing.

And so it was in a fit of pique that Rossiu, reading the Rite of Ascension from the sacred holy book as Gimmy and Darry crossed through the portal to the Celestial Lands, found himself following right behind them. The rash impulsiveness was so unlike the typically level-headed acolyte that, even now, he had trouble explaining it to himself.

_But when I did it__, _he reflected, _I thought I saw my mother._

A wave of guilt and shame washed over Rossiu as he realized what he had done. He had ascended without being chosen. He had taken the holy book of the tribe along with him. Those emotions soon shifted, replaced by anger and betrayal as the acolyte realized the truth of what had happened. The portal was sealed behind the three, leaving them with the cruel reality of what these 'Celestial Lands' really were.

Desolate. Barren. Dead.

No eternal happiness awaited them here. Only a slow, meaningless death, the kind that would serve no good save that of the villagers who had cast them out.

_The death of my mother. _Just his knowledge that his mother had assuredly died out here, wasting away with no one to comfort her, made Rossiu want to unshackle his emotions and curse those who had exiled him with his rage. Instead, he remained numb. No matter his despair, there was one thing Rossiu still held onto: the knowledge of those who still relied on his reassuring calm.

"Yes indeed, Darry," Rossiu finally spoke, nodding at the shiny rock the little girl was holding up to the newly-discovered sky. "It truly is a gift from the gods."

* * *

"Two more Gunmen hostiles, dead ahead!" Dayakka bellowed from the depths of his blue and tank-like personal Gunman, now christened the Dayakkaiser.

Kittan pivoted from his position on the Dayakkaiser's flank to a nearby building still under construction. Clambering up a nearby steel beam to get a better vantage point of the attackers, he could see the outlines of two enemy Gunmen. One looked to be roughly the shape of an ape, ferocious and almost feral in its appearance. The other...

"...that's the one I want," Kittan said over his comm-link as he pointed to the second Gunman in the distance, a fixture of enormous spikes with a metal carapace that shone like a crimson beacon in the rising sun. "That's a star. Just like me!"

"Well, someone's certainly been primping their self-esteem," Leeron's voice replied snarkily over the comm.

"Eh, I don't care what you think," Kittan said. "Needs a coat of yellow, but that's the Gunman for me. No doubt about it!"

The leader of the Black Siblings reached into a satchel for a handful of explosives, only to be met with a chiding interruption from Leeron. "Hey, slow down, chicken-hair. We want to hijack the Gunmen, not blow them up. Weren't you paying attention during the briefing?"

"What briefing-" Kittan started incredulously before he stopped and dove behind a wall of debris for cover as a fusillade of missiles was launched at his position. It appeared that he and Dayakka had been spotted.

"Just follow my lead!" Dayakka said, blunting most of the explosions with his Dayakkaiser's armor before pushing forward toward the hostiles, firing his main cannon ahead to cover his allies.

"I swear, working with you boys is like herding cats," Leeron moaned as he rested his head on his console in the main operations tower. "Thank goodness you've got your looks, I guess." The mechanic cycled to the next feed at the central defense zone. "Leeron here. Everything holding up on you fellas' ends? Rear and otherwise..."

"Uh... Iraak here," a slightly confused male answered. "Einzer is providing artillery support while Lagann Gurren is keeping the main Gunmen force occupied..."

"With Yoko!" an irritated female voice interrupted.

"Sorry, yeah, with Yoko. We should be mopping up the rest of them in no time."

"Mmm, good," Leeron said, nodding his head. "By any chance, is Lagann Gurren..."

"No, unfortunately. It's barely even moving," Iraak said. "Enough for it to draw the Beastmen's fire, but it's not going to be much help besides that, it looks like."

"Can't be helped, I guess," Leeron sighed. "Yoko, dear, if you can spare a moment?"

"Yeah?" Yoko's voice crackled through over a din of crossfire.

"Our cute little greenhorn could use a little help with you-know-what."

"Fine," Yoko said, swiveling her sniper's nest to sight down a new target.

Back in the war-torn streets of Gurren City, Kittan found himself pinned down in a narrow alley by the star-shaped Gunman. Just a block ahead the Dayakkaiser was engaging with the other ape-like Gunman, unable to get off a clean shot with its cannon in the close quarters as the two tussled from rooftop to rooftop.

"I can't get any closer," Kittan griped, narrowing his profile as much as he could manage in the cramped quarters. "How are we supposed to take over these things when we can't even get near 'em!?"

"You're _supposed _to do it at a distance."

Yoko's admonition and the sound of her gunshot alike reverberated through Kittan's ears as he witnessed a high-caliber round tear through a location on the Gunman ahead, just below dead-center on its face. The star-shaped mecha staggered under the impact, its firing coming to a halt as its face began to creak open to reveal the cockpit within.

"Oh, nice one, Yoko," Dayakka said as the Dayakkaiser hopped up away from its opponent with another wild cannon shot. "Go for it, Kittan!"

"You don't have to tell me twice!" With his heart pounding so hard he felt it might burst from his chest, Kittan slid out of cover and made a dash for the now-exposed Gunman.

_Just one block to go. Just one more block, _Kittan repeated over and over in his head, but under the bombardment of the surrounding Gunmen his destination felt as if it were miles away. He felt his muscles strain as he alternately vaulted over rubble and slid under wreckage. His vision blurred as acrid smoke billowed from seemingly every direction around him. Yet Kittan pressed on in the face of all these impediments, undeterred until at last he was confronted with an obstacle he could not ignore: the ape-like Gunman crashing down in front of him to block his path.

"Crap!" Kittan shouted as he stared up at the hostile mecha looming over him. He was a sitting duck in this position, and as the Gunman swiveled to reorient itself and spotted the lone human exposed in the street, he could tell it knew the same thing.

"Don't stop, Kittan!" Hearing the command echoed in his ear, the hot-headed blonde turned his panic to determination as best he could and broke into a full sprint. The hunched Gunman ahead was ready and waiting for him, and raised a clenched fist to crush the human underhand- before that fist was obliterated in the wake of a spectacular shot courtesy of the Dayakkaiser's cannon.

Kittan left the now hand-less Gunman and its furious howling pilot behind him as he finally reached the target. Kicking off the Gunman's foot, he soared up with a magnificent leap to the mouth of its massive face and landed with a gracefully limber pose.

One second later, a knobby fist knocked into Kittan's jaw and took him straight off his feet.

_Damn, right, the PILOT, _Kittan cursed to himself as he tried to evade the follow-up of his attacker. He could tell that it was some kind of green and stout Beastman, built like a boar, with ferocity and tenacity to match its appearance.

"I won't let you take my Gunman like you did the others!" it roared with a snort, charging to gore Kittan with its curved tusks. Unable to maneuver in the cramped surroundings, the young man was forced to brace himself on his heels and grabbed ahold of the tusks as they lunged toward him. He was barely able to keep the pointed tips from impaling his chest, but even as he grunted and pushed back against the Beastman's assault Kittan could feel his hands bleeding profusely from contact with the surprisingly sharp exterior of the tusks. This was a struggle the human knew he could not win.

"I look forward to dining on your bones, human...!" the Beastman taunted, practically salivating at this point.

"Oh, yeah?" Kittan said as he released one of his hands to reach back into his satchel. "Well, try snacking on _this _first!"

Drawing out a handful of black orbs, Kittan shoved his hand down the gaping jaw of the stunned Beastman. He crammed as many explosives as he could fit into the gullet of the monstrous enemy, before finally releasing his grip to duck for cover. The porcine foe squealed in shock as a second later Kittan's payload detonated within its body, blowing its head to bits and sending its body toppling out of the cockpit.

"Gross," Kittan said with a wince. "I bet we'll have to clean this thing for days after this."

"You mean _you'll _have to clean it," Leeron interjected sternly. "I'm not touching any rotten Beastman bits."

"Fine, fine." Kittan rolled his eyes as he slid into the seat and gripped the handles of the controls, feeling unbidden intuition flowing into him as his fighting spirit took hold of the now fully hijacked Gunman. "I've got a battle to get back to, anyway!"

"He says, as the battle's almost over," Leeron muttered.

"Alright, then! A star is born!" Kittan exulted as he pulled the mecha back up to its feet, swinging its arms uproariously as he launched back into the fray. "King Kittan, engage!"

* * *

"So that's how that new guy, Kittan, got his Gunman. Iraak's brother, I think his name's Kid, he was able to hijack the other Gunman shortly after that. Pretty good all in all, today."

"I see. Counting the previous Gunmen taken by Dayakka, Iraak, and those twins, then-"

"Jorgun and Balinbow."

"Yes. That would make five Gunmen acquired in total."

"Not counting Lagann Gurren."

"Yes... not counting that," Viral concurred with Yoko, his face a mask at the mention of Team Gurren's flagship mecha.

The female human crossed her hands across her flame-print bra as she appraised the captive Beastman skeptically. "I'm still not sure if I should be talking to you about this stuff," she said.

"There is not much I can do with anything you tell me as a captive, is there?"

"Well... no, I guess."

"Besides, this is the reason you have me here, yes? To assist you with intelligence?"

"Yeah, I suppose," Yoko reluctantly agreed. She had to admit, ever since she had gained the Beastman's confidence things had really picked up for Team Gurren as an effective fighting force. It was Viral who had given Team Gurren the information on the power conduits that regulated the hatches on Gunmen cockpits. That was a revelation that not only greatly aided in the humans' Gunmen hijacking, it also gave them the knowledge to defend against the same tactic in the event that it were ever used against them. His knowledge of Beastmen raid schedules was similarly invaluable, and his extensive familiarity with the various Gunmen types was downright scary.

As it stood, while Yoko had initially been loathe to share the slightest bit of information with Viral, she found herself confiding more and more with her captive through dint of the sheer magnitude of insight he was able to share with her - and by extension, the rest of humanity.

"I still don't know why you're doing this, though," the teenage girl spoke again, crouching down and biting her lip. These days she sat very close to Viral, far too close to ensure her own safety. It didn't scare her.

"I told you before," Viral said. "I just want the fighting to end. No more conflict. No more suffering."

"Yeah, but-"

"Didn't you say you felt the same way?" the Beastman asked rhetorically. He spoke the truth, there. In her frustration and despair Yoko had found herself confessing her deepest emotions to their captive. She found it surprising that he actually listened. She found it even more surprising that he empathized with her in kind.

Did she trust Viral? The question was almost an affront to the warrior who had spent as long as she could remember fighting off the predations of the Beastmen. But the fact that she was asking the question at all spoke volumes.

"How are your Gunmen functioning?" Viral continued, not waiting for an answer to his last question.

"Oh, they're doing good, more or less. Lagann Gurren's still a problem, but it contributes where it counts."

Viral leaned over as much as his bindings would allow, tracing Yoko's curved posture with catlike eyes as he made a reassuring Cheshire grin.

"Tell me about Lagann Gurren."

* * *

_I did everything right that time, _Kamina reflected as he sat slumped over in the cold embrace of the nearly pitch dark cockpit. _I know I did._

Kamina knew what it took to pilot Gurren. It was a heavy lift for him - almost cripplingly so - but he had learned very well what the small mecha required from its pilot as a result. The clarity of purpose and fighting spirit were something that he had not always been able to hold onto, especially in the wake of recent events.

But he had it today. Lagann Gurren should have worked. It _was _working. As the Gunmen raid for the day approached, Kamina had executed a perfect spin-on with the core drill. He felt his consciousness and determination course through the titan; he felt himself reaching the promise of tomorrow through the victory of today.

And then like a circuit feeding back upon itself, it was over. Kamina's control was ripped from him. Not lost control like Kamina had experienced in the past, a sensation of slowly losing grip on the extremities of the mecha until he slipped back into himself. But a painful jolt of being shut down at his very core.

Lagann was fine. The problem was _Gurren. _The mecha was fighting the will of its master, retracting its drill from the composite Gunman it had been tasked to operate.

"Ha ha ha," Kamina laughed, scraping against the unyielding metal interior with cracked fingertips. "You won't forgive me for what I did to Simon either, will you? Can't say I blame you, little guy."

Leeron tried to ignore the feed to Lagann Gurren's cockpit as he continued to brief Kinon and Leyte, a surly blonde woman, on the various interfaces of Gurren City's Operations Tower. Normally he was guardedly jealous of his technological innovations, but the two females were proving to have a remarkable aptitude for all things mechanical.

"Now then, girls, here you'll see the various readouts for all the Gunmen we have in Team Gurren," Leeron said, pointing to each screen with a flourish of his finger. "The power levels are also displayed, which can fluctuate very wildly depending on the pilot or changing circumstances on the ground."

"Huh. Pretty ingenious, Ron," Leyte commented as she idly chewed on a cigarette wedged in her mouth. "I think I might be able to help clean up a bit of the layout, if you want."

"Please do," Leeron said, looking around the cluttered space and scrunching his nose. "This place needs as much tidying as possible."

"Why aren't the power outputs stable?" Kinon piped up.

"That's an _excellent _question. No idea," Leeron answered. "For what it's worth, Beastmen-piloted Gunmen seem to have a fairly stable power output. It's only when humans enter the equation that things become volatile."

"That's interesting," Leyte said. "Wonder if we can use that, somehow."

"How about those readouts on that big screen there?" Kinon said, continuing her questions.

"That's a map of the area, with Gurren City at the center," the lead mechanic explained. "The smaller arrows represent possible vectors of Gunmen raids that our scouts have identified. Except for the big one to the west. That's a signal for a recall point that we've found embedded in all the Gunmen we've captured up to now. Our best guess is that it's the Beastmen's home base."

"Huh. If that's the case though, then why...?"

"Why what?" Leeron asked, raising an immaculately threaded eyebrow at Kinon's query.

"Why is it getting closer?"

* * *

"I'm so thirsty, Darry," Gimmy wheezed.

"Here, take my last sip of water," Darry whispered to her twin brother. She passed him the flask of the precious liquid, ignoring her own parched throat with a smile as she watched him happily sip at the remaining drops of water.

Rossiu had long relinquished the last of his water to the two children in his care, and it showed on his weathered features. Cradling each of their light bodies in his arms he forced himself to take yet another step across the seemingly endless wastes they had all been condemned to die upon.

Hope had long left the young man. The comforting level-headed thinking that had sustained him beneath the surface now served as a curse, a blight upon his senses that left him with no other conclusion other than that he would die. After he watched these two helpless children waste away. It was a horror that he could barely comprehend, but perhaps a penance which he deserved. How many deaths like these had he been complicit in?

_Mother... I'm sorry, _Rossiu thought waveringly as his eyes began to close, surely to never reopen again after being taken by the cold embrace of the grave.

For a moment there was nothing but stillness, and Rossiu idly wondered if the end had already come for him. Then the ground shook with the force of a terrible quake, and Rossiu's eyes fluttered open once more.

"W, what!?" The former acolyte of Adai let out a cry of disbelief as he gazed out toward the horizon. It was too preposterous to be a hallucination, but he could not comprehend the sight all the same - a mighty crimson mountain of metal, likewise extending perpendicularly from its center like a massive horizontal pillar. It shattered the earth with every step it took, and at its apex Rossiu could just make out one more distinctive feature: a sight that shook him to his very core.

_A face god!?_

Sluggishly Rossiu dragged himself around, shuffling toward the moving mountain's trajectory as quickly as his barely standing legs would allow. His two wards were already unconscious, he saw, so he would have to hurry. He did not know if he would be able to reach this face god. Or even, considering everything he had been through up to now, if the titanic deity would bring anything besides more hostility for the three wandering exiles.

There was one thing Rossiu _was_ sure of, however. _It can't be any worse than here._


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Hey, that sounded like a drill.

* * *

"Bored."

"Bored!"

"WE'RE BORED! WE'RE BORED!"

"Put a sock in it, you two," Leyte said with a disapproving flatness that somehow managed to drown out the twins Jorgun and Balinbow. "I swear, sometimes you two almost make as much of a racket as Makken."

Makken, a small and beady-eyed newcomer, glanced over briefly at this before turning back to his Gunman with a grunt.

"But we gotta fight," Balinbow pleaded.

"We just gotta!" Jorgun chimed in, banging on the violet carapace of the twins' custom Gunman, the Twinboekun.

"Honestly," Leyte said, incredulously lowering her glasses to reveal her dark eyes. "Complaining about _not _being attacked by Gunmen is pathetically immature. Even for you two."

_They've got a point, though, _Leeron thought as he stood from his desk with a sigh to make another set of rounds on the Gunmen Hangar. What was normally a junked mess of incomplete construction and spare parts had been forged into an eerie orderliness. Each and every Gunman Team Gurren had captured stood fully operational in neat rows. Silvery dividers both separated the Gunmen and provided platforms to facilitate efficient maintenance. Even the figurehead of the human resistance, Lagann Gurren, was polished to a mirror sheen, for all the good it was doing at the moment.

The lights had been almost perpetually dimmed for weeks, only brightening when the pilots engaged in operational exercises. The emergency medbay had been practically abandoned, because there were no casualties. There was no battle damage for the mechanics to repair, because there were no battles.

The Gunmen raids had stopped.

Leeron stopped as he passed by a nearby window. The skyline of Gurren City was evolving almost by the second now. Once barren soil had been seeded and populated; single-story buildings were being replaced with glittering half-built spires. With the necessity of having to cope with the aftermath of Gunmen raids removed, what had once been a trickle of growth had turned into an unstoppable wave of expansion.

There were those who were even allowing themselves to dream that the Gunmen attacks were perhaps, after so long, finally over. There were even times when Leeron was tempted to give in to that tantalizing hope. It was a hope that unified each and every individual in Gurren City. A hope that was, above all else, quintessentially human.

Then Leeron would look at his radar display, and those thoughts were promptly cast aside.

The recall point was still getting closer.

* * *

Rossiu knew that death was not preferable to this existence. Sometimes, however, it was hard to keep that in mind.

Unable to resist his thirst any longer, the stony-faced adolescent brought his hand to the nearby trickle of liquid and brought it to his lips. _Even the water back in Adai Village was better than this, _he thought with a grimace. This runoff was water, yes, but also something foul and inimical to human life. Slaking his thirst as much as he could tolerate, Rossiu lowered himself to a few patches of soil and began to sift through the dirt for something, anything that might provide some vital nutrients.

It had been weeks since Rossiu had consigned Gimmy, Darry, and himself to this existence of scrounging for bitter survival. But what he had considered the hellish existence of Adai Village was a paradise in comparison to what they now faced - subsistence inside the metal foot of a face god.

_It was a miracle we did not find ourselves crushed under the face god, _Rossiu reminded himself. It was only by sheer luck that the steps of the face god had missed them by a hair, that he and his charges had not been smashed into the landscape. Instead they had been spared, and with those precious few moments Rossiu had seized the opportunity to grab hold of the metal foot's exterior. Pulling with the last of his strength, he had dragged the twins and himself into a crevice to safety, safety within this gargantuan mountain of metal.

Rossiu had traded certain death for a hellish life, but life it was nevertheless. It was dark and stifling with noxious fumes, but a trickle of tainted water was enough to provide for all three. Food was a more spotty prospect, but it did not take long to understand that whatever the face god trampled underfoot was churned through its foot's interior. Clumps of roots, handfuls of berries, even the occasional carcass could all be found in the steady stream of dirt cycling in and out of the floor of the foot, if one only had the patience to unearth them.

Yet there was a darker side to the sustenance and shelter that the face god provided.

The first night that the mountain of metal had ground to a halt, Rossiu considered leaving its interior. Whether this impulse was out of a desire to get its attention or simple curiosity, he could not say. But when the youth peeked his head through the crevice to look outside, all he was greeted with was death and despair.

_Humans._

Humans that lived on the surface. They were real - as real as they were fragile, a fragility evinced in the obliteration of their settlement by the face god. Even now, Rossiu could hear the shrieks of the helpless victims, each and every time he thought back to that effortless, inhumane massacre. No, more than inhumane.

_Inhuman._

So it was that the former acolyte was made to understand that the instrument of his salvation was more than a refuge. It was a prison. Rossiu had no doubt that the face god would exterminate both him and his two charges given the opportunity. It probably had no clue that it was even carrying stowaways, in all likelihood. Just another bitter irony of the outsized influence the face gods had exerted on Rossiu's life, he noted bitterly.

Hauling himself back up to the tubing that he had forged into makeshift hammocks, Rossiu settled back in next to the still-sleeping Gimmy and Darry. The little twins spent most of the time sleeping these days. Rossiu understood the reason was not due to any sort of contentment or satiation in their lives, but due to something far more insidious. He had seen it far too many times to count before in Adai Village: malnourishment.

_Something has to change, _Rossiu thought wearily as he drifted back off to sleep. _We cannot carry on like this._

* * *

"You want me to do _what?_"

"Believe me, I wouldn't ask if I wasn't at the end of my rope," Yoko said. She was putting on a brave face. She hoped it would be enough. "I want you to help us look for Simon."

"The little blue-haired runt?" Viral asked in disbelief. "You can't keep track of your own people?"

"We knew where Simon was... until recently." Yoko tried to make her words as vague and diplomatic as possible, but she doubted she could keep it up for long. Tracking Simon down in a timely manner would likely necessitate all kinds of sensitive information, and Yoko was determined to err on the side of Simon's safety over her reservations about her captive. Anything that might happen to that kid now... that was Yoko's responsibility, and nothing would be able to convince her otherwise.

"He... he was staying in one of the food pantries. We'd been checking up on him, making sure he was at least leaving to use the bathroom, eating. But when we came this morning, he was nowhere to be found. The pantry lights were cut, and there was no trail to be found.

"No trail that any _human_ could follow, anyway," Yoko added.

"Mmm. How long has he been staying in this food pantry?"

"...a few weeks now."

"I see. Is it _normal__, _then, for humans to abruptly take up the lifestyle of a recluse? Or for their friends to facilitate their isolation?"

"I..." Yoko scowled despite herself, but held onto her veneer of authority as tightly as she could still manage. "No, it's not."

"Very well," Viral said. He stood up to his full height for the first time in weeks, exerting the full imposition of his bestial image on the slender girl before him.

"And why should I help you in this? I am having difficulty seeing how this facilitates a swifter end to our hostilities. In fact, were I to make a recommendation, I would advise you leave this child to his own devices. A search will consume resources you can ill-afford to waste."

Yoko flinched at Viral's bloodless analysis of the situation, but did not speak. The Beastman spoke the truth, after all. All her real reasons, her real motivations... they were too pitifully personal to admit. Too emotional. Too human.

"Fine," Viral spoke again to break the silence. "I will do it."

"Y, you will?" Much as she would have wished otherwise, Yoko's voice could not help but betray her slack-jawed surprise.

"You appear set on conducting this search, regardless of the costs that it will impose. My assistance will ensure those resources will be mishandled for as short a time as possible."

"I see," Yoko said with a small nod. She glanced behind her and gave a small hand signal. Almost instantly the area began to fill with humans, each of them armed to the teeth, and all aiming their weapons directly at the Beastman captive.

"You try anything, and it'll be the last thing you do."

"I'm touched, Miss Yoko," Viral grinned as Yoko began releasing him from his numerous restrains. "I thought you would have brought more guns than this."

* * *

Viral sniffed the air as gingerly as he could manage, to little use. The pantry was almost overpowering in the stale bitterness of its odor. It was a stench bereft of smell, a testament to the decay and abandonment that permeated the room.

"What have you got, Viral?" Yoko asked from behind the Beastman.

"Nothing. Yet." Viral swallowed his bile at his superior senses being used in the manner of a common spudhound. _This is only a necessity, _he reminded himself, adjusting his catlike eyes to the dark space. The Beastman began to stalk forward, only to feel the tug of a leash around his neck bringing him back to heel.

_That is... considerably less tolerable._

"Don't go too far," Yoko warned, almost apologetically.

Ensuring that he had some slack before moving again, Viral began to examine this 'pantry' once again, in earnest. He doubted it had originally been constructed for this purpose, observing the chamber's expansive size that easily dwarfed the stores it contained. Far too large, the chamber was practically oppressive in its expanse, impressing an unmistakable sense of smallness on the humanoids standing within. Rows and rows of provisions lined the room, ordered in a method that, while certainly not unorganized, was far from military precision. Viral began to drink in the room's vastness, letting his enhanced senses tell a story that was invisible to the inferior beings holding him in their thrall.

_Vision. _There were a few containers that had been emptied but not removed from the room, in contrast to what one might expect of provisions being distributed to the general populace. Instead the rations had been consumed and the containers piled in one corner of the room, as one might expect from a single individual trying to live unobtrusively in such a vast storeroom.

"I am moving forward," Viral announced, without heed to whatever response the humans would give.

_Hearing. _Aside from the humans at his back, there was not a single sound in the immediate area - not a footstep, nor a breath, nor even a heartbeat. The chamber even seemed to be remarkably free of vermin, a phenomenon that the Beastman found himself at a loss to explain, at the moment.

"H, hey!" Yoko trotted close behind Viral, rubbing her exposed skin with slinky, uneven movements. "Ugh, maybe I should have worn an extra layer before coming here..."

_Touch. _The room was cold. Very cold. So cold that Viral could now easily understand the lack of vermin as he fully appreciated the frigid atmosphere. His attention turned instead to the stores, marveling that they had not crusted over with frost. It was indicative of a high amount of turnover in the humans' provisions, Viral concluded. They were consuming a great quantity of food. But also bringing in just as much.

"A child spending lengthy periods of time in a room like this would risk contracting hypothermia."

_Scent. _The rows and rows of non-perishables contributed to a scent that was mind-numbing in its monotony. But this far in, Viral was catching the scent of a familiar human and a... mole-rat? They had resided in this room, but they had not left. Not through the front door, anyway.

"I..." Yoko pushed away the burning pangs of regret and guilt at her neglecting Simon for later. "Just focus on your job!"

_Taste. _Viral scooped up a bit of residue collected in one of the containers stacked up conspicuously in one of the corners, and placed some on his tongue. He clucked his tongue at the taste, and then tried another container, and then another still. The whole of them confirmed what the Beastman had suspected - the rations had been opened some time ago; none of these stores were fresh.

"He has not been here for some time."

_Scent. _Viral's tongue could practically lap up the new sensation flooding into his nostrils - the acrid atmosphere in proximity to what were clearly cut wires.

"What!? What makes you say that?"

_Vision. _The cuts were not clean - they were pointed and twisted, as if the wires had been broken with a corkscrew or similar implement.

"He is doing what he has to do. He did not want to be followed."

_Hearing. _There it was. This far back, he could hear it. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape, scrape, scrape.

Viral unhunched from his predatory stalk with a self-satisfied preen, startling Yoko and the other humans out of their complacency. "I know where he is."

* * *

Simon the Digger was digging.

He wasn't gonna get the girl. His blood brother had abandoned him. He had no more tears left to shed.

But he still had his drill.

_"Your drill is the drill that will pierce the heavens!" _Those words were a lifetime ago now, from a time when he could still imagine Kamina at his back, pushing him forward, making sure that together the two would overcome any obstacle that stood in their way. Now all he had left were those words, those falsities, those lies made manifest by the light his weakness.

But those words were all he had left. So he dug.

Scrape, scrape, scrape. How long ago had he started digging? He wasn't sure. He didn't know why at this point. He was digging less in a direction and more with a purpose, a purpose that let him ignore the tired ache in his bones and the pangs of hunger in his stomach. He took out another ration bar and bit into the chewy nutrients anyway. Digging used up a lot of calories, after all.

Scrape, scrape, scrape. He hadn't dug this much in a long time. A really long time. Was he even drilling up, Simon wondered? It wouldn't have been the first time he had gone off-course, and there was no Kamina to get him out of a jam this time. He could die down here. Maybe he should turn around. Or maybe that's what he wanted.

Scrape, scrape, scrape. Light.

Scrape, scrape, scrape. So much light. Was this what the end felt like? The little digger felt relieved - he was ready for it, now.

Scrape, scrape, scrape. The face.

Simon gasped as he burst out of a smoothly polished floor, falling over under the shadow of a painfully familiar sight. The sight that was, for all the world, a face within a face. The symbol for humanity. Lagann Gurren.

Boota slid out of Simon's jacket and began to lick his face to rouse him, making sure he didn't go under in his currently compromised state.

"Okay... okay, Boota, I'm up," Simon murmured, pushing himself up to his feet and glancing around groggily at his surroundings. Some kind of hangar? It was so shiny...

"Hey, that sounded like a drill."

Simon the Digger had only to hear that one voice, and suddenly the rest of his surroundings were practically invisible to him. All he could see now instead, was one figure. A figure in a painful, crisp sharpness, tall and limber, ruddy and tattooed, billowing red and orange with his cape and staring crimson at him through sharp and angular sunglasses.

"Simon?"

Kamina tapped his sword on his shoulder as he continued to stare at Simon. The blue-haired teen was a total wreck, covered in dirt and grime and heavens only knew what else, but he was standing proudly now as he looked back at his blood brother. Standing proudly as he gripped his hand-operated drill in his hand, with the confidence to break through heaven and earth, for the first time Kamina felt as though the boy before him was staring him down like an equal.

"Bro."


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Simon versus Kamina.

* * *

'Bro.'

It was Kamina who had insisted, from the outset, that Simon call him by that most unusual and familiar of names. A name that was more than a name, a name that was the deepest expression of not just a relationship. It reflected a particular mindset, a _philosophy _that constituted the foundation of a relationship. The philosophy that Simon and Kamina were as close as brothers, that they were _real _brothers, connected not by birth but by an unbreakable bond of blood, blood that burned with a twin intensity between the two. Two sides of one double helix.

And Simon was still holding onto that, it seemed.

_Hmm, still clinging to the past. That just won't do._

"Oh, no, you don't," Kamina growled under his breath as he clenched his fists tightly, hard enough to draw blood.

"Bro, I... I gotta talk to you. About what happened before."

Kamina could barely hear Simon's soft-spoken voice as he continued to steel his will for battle. Not battle from without, an enemy he could face, but a battle within, against the insidious influence that had corrupted his very existence.

_C'mon, you gotta stop resisting this. It's what needs to be done._

"Don't give me that! I don't gotta listen to a damn thing you say!"

"But, Bro, it _needs _to be said," Simon replied, oblivious to the fact that he was unintentionally answering a statement that had not meant to address him. "I... no, you. You really hurt me back there, Bro."

_Just look at him. Still holding on to all that weakness._

"You were right, of course. About me liking Yoko, I mean. Maybe I was being immature about it, too..."

_You wanna help him stand on his own two feet? Then stop resisting, dumbass._

"But..." Simon gulped as he looked up at his blood brother and gripped the drill in his hands so forcefully it was now threatening to come apart. "That doesn't make what you did right, Bro. I didn't deserve that."

Kamina pursed his lips slightly as he appraised the little digger standing in front of him. He was still marveling at Simon's very presence; the enormous feat of having burrowed all the way here to Lagann Gurren was simply staggering. "I wasn't expecting you to come and find me," Kamina said, with blunt honesty.

_That's because you don't have faith in him like you should. He's strong enough to survive this. To survive you._

* * *

"Hold on, back up. Where did he go, Viral?"

"The child made a tunnel through this hole," Viral said, pulling a large stack of containers over to reveal an opening just large enough for a person to fit through.

Yoko's heart sank as she pointed her flashlight on the hole through which Simon had escaped her notice. "We... we need to cover the other rooms in the facility," she said with a nod to the soldiers assisting her. "Anywhere Simon might have come out of."

"That's assuming the child isn't still digging," Viral remarked.

The girl holding the Beastman's leash flinched as she recognized that her prisoner had a point. "And if he is...?"

"Send me."

Yoko stifled a guffaw at Viral's proposal. "What makes you think I would send you?"

"Because I am faster, Miss Yoko. Because while you cannot use your flashlights in those close quarters, I can see in the dark tunnels the child has burrowed - and make no mistake, he may have created _many _tunnels in the time since he started. Because you would be searching blindly, while I can track him by scent. But most importantly of all, because you simply do not have the time to waste."

Yoko furrowed her brow as she looked from Viral's furtive eyes to the leash she held in her gloved hand. She could feel that Viral's words carried the weight of logic with them. It was indeed possible that he was the key to finding Simon as soon as possible, before anything happened to him. That was what she had gone this far to do, wasn't it? And yet...

_Never expose yourself._

"No," Yoko said with an air of finality. "Thank you, Viral, but your help will no longer be needed. Simon is my... is our responsibility. Lieutenant, get some hard hats. Make sure they're equipped with flashlights. We'll need to send a team through the tunnel."

Viral closed his eyes as a pensive frown crossed his features. "If that is what you wish, Miss Yoko..."

A flash of motion sliced across Yoko's vision, prodding her to jump back on reflex. The teenage girl let out a gasp as she realized the leash she in her hand remained slack - the chain had been cut.

"...then our partnership is officially at an end!"

Yoko grimaced at her folly as she reached for her sidearm. The sight of Viral's claws snapping the chain with effortless ease, his taking advantage of the darkness to dispatch her allies, his move toward the tunnel opening... it was coming to her all too late as she tracked the now-freed Beastman making his escape.

_I was already exposed._

* * *

Kamina was still in control. The Kamina that he thought he was, anyway. The _other _Kamina was a different story.

"I want you to know something, though, Bro."

Simon was still talking to him? That was good, Kamina knew. He tried to hold onto that feeling as a heaviness began to weigh down on him, palpable enough that the ground seemed as if it would swallow him up whole. He dropped his cape and sword to the floor and started walking away to clear his head, but every step felt as though it carried the weight of a thousand tons. His senses were slowing to a crawl. This dissonance, it seemed, had its drawbacks.

"It's that..." Simon continued talking as he followed after Kamina, easily keeping up with the older teenager's sluggish pace. "What you did was wrong, Bro. I don't know why you did it. But that's okay, I think."

_Oh, you idiot. No, no, no, no, don't let him do this. Not now. Not when he's so close._

"I'm not going to dwell on it any longer. I don't want to be upset anymore. You're still my bro, Bro. I just want things to go back to the way they used to be.

Even despite the roiling conflict inside of him, Kamina managed to smile warmly at Simon's declaration. "Heh. I think that's just..."

_Witness it._

A wail like shattering glass erupted from the deepest depths of Kamina's throat as he fell to one knee. His lean muscles spasmed like earthquakes as they pressed against the floor and his eyes shot open without his consent, vacant and glassy.

"Bro! Are you okay!?"

The lights of starships snuffed out like candles in an infinite sea of darkness. His world's crust sundered to its core. A universe aflame in death.

"What..."

_This isn't a game. This is the future that I'm - that we're - here to stop. _

"Here, I've got you, Bro. Come on, just sit down over here."

_It needs more than a drill that can crack the heavens. It needs a sword that can change a man's destiny._

Kamina let his weight rest as much as he dared on Simon's surprisingly strong back. It was the back that kept him going in his darkest times, he remembered, a back that was supporting him even now, in the midst of all the tribulations he was pushing on his blood brother. He wheezed as Simon brought him to rest awkwardly on the edge of a metal divider, coughing a little as he breathed in the oily scent of the hangar.

"There you go, Bro," Simon said with a relieved exhale as he set Kamina down.

_So much is riding on his shoulders... but there's still more to come._

Kamina's eyes shot up to meet Simon's once again, this time crystal clear in their clarity. "Simon..."

"Wh... what is it, Bro?" The blue-haired youngster's eyes widened at the sound of his closest friend speaking up again.

"Let's see you grit those teeth."

* * *

Viral's panting grew more ragged as he wriggled his way farther still up the tunnel. Not as a response to any kind of immediate danger, mind; he had long left his captors in the proverbial dust. The escapee was drunk off the thrill of freedom and the endless possibilities now presented to him. Viral's nostrils sucked in another breath of air to confirm the boy's trail, and he pushed up again.

He could make good his escape and bring his intel back to the armies of the Spiral King. A turnabout for the ages it could be, to come back as triumphant Commander and bury these insolent humans by the weight of their own hubris. Or perhaps he could destroy them from the inside. Guerrilla warfare, sabotage, assassination, he could practically tear the resistance apart single-handedly given enough time.

_No, _Viral thought as he clawed his way through another clump of sculpted dirt toward his ultimate destination. _I can smell HIM, too. And that means..._

No time to think about that now. His sensitive eyes could now see the tiny rays of light peeking through from up ahead. Viral was nearly at his destination.

"What will I find, I wonder..."

The Beastman's musing ended as he broke through the surface into the humans' Gunmen hangar... just in time to see the boy he had been tracking take a direct punch to the face from an older human.

"Aaaaoooowwwwww!" The boy's pitiful wail echoed through the vast walls of the hangar bay as he crumpled into the ground.

_Looks like I found... Simon, was it? _Viral thought, observing the curious sight with a raised eyebrow. _And, of course, that's Kamina..._

Viral could scarcely believe his luck. It was so fortuitous that the word itself was possibly not even sufficient to describe it. It was on the level of a serendipity, everything that he had been looking for coming to a head in one place.

"Ha... Kamina," Viral rasped as he stalked into the depths of the hangar. "Today, I will exact my vengeance on you!"

* * *

Kamina's blow was so fierce that Boota was blown from his perch on Simon's shoulder from the shock, squealing helplessly in the face of the younger teen's punishment.

"W..." Simon could barely choke out the words in his pain. His face was swelled with the force of the impact, and he could even feel a tooth of his knocked loose now with his blood-soaked tongue. He really hoped that was a baby tooth. "Why...?"

"I give you my word that if you ever start to doubt yourself, I'll come belt you one," Kamina said, tightening the white bandages wrapped around his forearms. He stepped forward again and took an aggressive stance - and Simon's heart sank as he realized his blood brother was not going to back down. "But I expect the same thing of you, too, Simon!"

"What does that even mean!?" Simon exclaimed as he barely rolled out of the way from Kamina's next attack, a leaping knee drop that dropped with enough force to break Simon's ribs.

"It means that I don't buy your crap, blood brother," Kamina said as he rose up again with crossed arms. "And you shouldn't buy _mine,_ either."

Simon froze for an instant. What was Kamina saying?

"This is about settling things between us. Blood brother to blood brother. Simon versus Kamina." Kamina continued his monologuing with a leap onto one of the nearby metal rails. Using the momentum to kick off, he spun like a corkscrew in the air and delivered a roundhouse kick into Simon's side.

"Ugh!" Simon tried to raise his arms with a labored grunt, but Kamina kept pressing his advantage. He didn't have any space to breathe. And soon, if he kept getting cornered, he wouldn't have any place left to run, either.

"I don't need you to forgive me. And I don't need you to forget what I did, either. What I need you to do...

"IS TO GET ANGRY!"

Kamina's roar was punctuated with the slap of flesh on flesh, and he twisted his body to lean into his punch- only to find his momentum had suddenly halted.

Simon, staring at his hands with downcast eyes, had brought his palms together at the last second to block the path of Kamina's punch... and caught it.

"Heh... well, that's a start, Simon, but you'll have to do better than that-"

Kamina's bloviating stopped as Simon grabbed hold of one of his fingers and snapped it with a twist.

* * *

_How could I have been so stupid?_

Was it Yoko's luck that led her to put her trust in the most unscrupulous of men, or was she just that bad a judge of character? The answer didn't really matter at the moment, but it was something to think about, once she managed to fix this.

_If I even can fix it this time, _Yoko thought ruefully as she hauled herself up through the tunnel after Viral. The Beastman's assessment, despite his betrayal, was proving distressingly prescient. Crawling skyward through the ground was akin to running a marathon through a quagmire. She wasn't just gaining respect for Simon in her venture to follow in his path, she was starting to think the boy might be just this side of superhuman. Crawling through this was bad enough - to _build _a tunnel like this?

At least there didn't seem to be a series of tunnels, as Viral had postulated there might have been. Yoko was already at a disadvantage in speed, sight, and strength; any more burdens placed on her would be liable to kill her, she reasoned. Pursuing the escaped Beastman on her own was a stupid enough move on its own, after all. She couldn't aim her rifle in these close quarters, not that she was able to see to begin with. And she was no match for Viral in martial combat. But if anything happened due to her foolish mistake, Yoko knew that she wouldn't be able to live with herself.

So the teenager followed up the tunnel despite realizing her own idiocy, slinking her curvaceous figure as rapidly as she could in a blind panic. Worst case scenario, after all, would just mean her dying along with any other casualties Viral might inflict.

_Not like anyone would even care what happens to me at this point. I'm less valuable than the rifle on my back._

Yoko grunted again and strained a little farther upward, once more. _But I can give my life to ensure no one else has to pay for my mistakes._

* * *

Kamina and Simon didn't fight each other. But that didn't mean they didn't fight.

In a subsistence society like that of Giha Village, conflict was an inevitability. The chief limited excessive fighting as much as he could manage - which was normally heeded, given that he was the only member of the village traditionally armed with a sword - but fights would boil over again and again, nevertheless.

Yet when Simon fought, it was always to protect himself or another. He may have become hot-blooded at times, but his strikes never failed to belie his reticence. Behind the young digger's fighting posture, there was always a hope for reconciliation.

Until now.

"KAMIIIIIINNNNNAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Not Bro. Kamina. The battle cry struck Kamina like lightning as he felt his legs pounded from either side by a barrage of strikes almost too fast for his eyes to track. Simon was smaller than him, and weaker too, no doubt about it. But damned if he wasn't agile as anything Kamina had ever seen in his life. And of more concern...

"Ungh!" Kamina felt his knee give out from under him as Simon crashed into it head-first. The older teen tried to strike back wildly with an overhead hammer blow, but Simon beat him to the punch again as he jumped up to smash his head into his blood brother's chin.

The fact that Simon's headbutt had sent him crashing into the leg of a nearby Gunman was about all the silver lining Kamina had, a small moment to catch his breath before the younger man came hurtling at him yet again. Kamina's skill and raw strength advantage was being sorely limited in a brawl like this, and not only because he was grappling with his own reticence to harm his closest of friends.

"You... you always get the power, the glory, the girl, and you leave me with scraps!"

Kamina slipped under another leaping haymaker from Simon and winced as he heard the sound of knuckles cracking against metal behind him. Simon was putting his entire being into his attacks - striking hard enough to fracture his own bones in the process. It was horrifying to witness. But the strength, the resolve, the rage...

_This is what he needed._

Kamina shook his head at himself, but decided not to relitigate that battle for the moment. Swinging up on a nearby maintenance ladder, Kamina started hauling himself up toward the top of the Gunman and away from Simon.

"Don't tell me you're running away now, Kamina!" Simon shrieked from below.

Kamina couldn't help but laugh in return. "The mighty Kamina never runs! Not even from his trusted blood brother."

"If that's the case, then..."

Kamina suddenly felt his grip faltering as the ladder began to shake. The maintenance ladder was hardly well-secured due to its requirements of mobility, and that fact was now being exploited by Simon as he rattled it back and forth in an attempt to dislodge Kamina.

"H, hey! Be careful, now! What if it-"

The ladder completed Kamina's unspoken worry: it broke in half.

* * *

Leeron let out only the barest, most imperceptible of sighs as he finished brewing his coffee and took his station in the Gunmen Hangar's Control Center.

"Another day on the grind." The lithe technician glanced at his routine inventory logs and the Gunmen maintenance schedules for the day. Everything was in order; everything was unchanged. _I'd almost give anything to end this unbearable monotony, _he thought ruefully.

Then Leeron sipped his coffee, glanced out the window into the Gunmen Hangar, and promptly spit his coffee out all over the glass.

"I DIDN'T MEAN IT!"

There was a hole in the middle of his hangar. Not a little hole, but a hole large enough for a human to fall into - and given his luck, someone absolutely would if he didn't address the issue immediately. No, scratch that. There was already a human in the hole.

"Yoko?" Leeron exclaimed in disbelief. He clutched his coffee so roughly that he thought he might break his mug as he watched the voluptuous girl's ample chest spill from out of the pit in the center of the room. "I swear, why can't it ever be a scantily clad fella coming up from under me?"

The direction of Leeron's ruminations was interrupted as he realized there was more than just one intrusion into his hangar. Two figures were exchanging blows on a broken ladder, against the face of... King Kittan, it looked like? He could recognize one of them quickly enough.

"What kind of trouble has Kamina gotten himself into now, I wonder? Did he tick off one of the mechanics or- Simon!?"

Leeron grabbed a pair of binoculars from his side to zoom in on the action. As his lenses came into focus, it quickly became clear this was no minor scuffle - the two were going after each other with everything they had. So fascinating was the sight of each man smashing the other into the metal teeth of King Kittan, that Leeron failed to notice the readings of a power surge flaring up from the display behind him.

* * *

"Listen up, and listen good, Simon! He stands athwart a golden apex, a man whose destiny beats in time with his brother's ascent to surpass-"

"WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO TALK SO MUCH!?"

Simon scrambled up the side of the golden mecha to another diagonal point at the top of its head, lunging after Kamina with a hoarse snarl.

"The _point _is, blood brother," Kamina grunted, barely blocking the attack with a raised knee, "that you can't be so soft. Even with the ones you love - no, especially with them. Or it might cost you everything."

"And I'd say you've got the opposite problem!"

"...you'll get no arguments from me," Kamina murmured to himself.

The two blood brothers now occupied opposite sides on the top of the star-shaped mecha, each ready to put the entirety of their very souls into their next blow.

"KAMINA!" Simon wound up a fist from his crouched position and aimed it straight at Kamina's jaw.

"SIMON!" Kamina tightened his own fist in a mirror image of Simon's, preparing to deliver a crushing cross-counter.

"Simon! Kamina! Stop this!"

Both fighters halted their attacks mid-strike as they heard the plaintive cry from below. Yoko's cry.

_What are you doing? Hit him! He's gotta learn!_

"I..." Kamina's face contorted, his soul in dissonance once again. Simon, too, seemed to have become overwhelmed with ambivalence.

"Whatever you're fighting about, it can wait until later!" Yoko continued, surprised that she had such full attention from the both of them but not willing to let her moment pass her by. "No matter how much bad blood has been spilled between us all, we still need you. _Both _of you."

"Yoko..." It only now occurred to Kamina how she might have truly been feeling about his actions. About everything, in truth. Not merely as an academic question, but as to her deepest feelings and emotions... was he truly prepared to sacrifice everything upon this pyre?

_You HAVE to-_

"Besides, we've got a bigger problem on our hands. Our prisoner-"

Yoko's words were cut off with a squeal as the floor of the Gunmen Hangar began to rip apart at its very foundation.

"What the heck!?" Kamina shouted, grabbing onto an edge of the Gunmen and Simon with each arm as it tottered under the quaking.

"It's Lagann Gurren!"

"Leeron!?" Yoko cried in response to the familiar voice breaking in over the hangar's loudspeakers.

"I didn't see it until just now, because I was... busy. But Lagann Gurren's power levels are spiking off the charts!"

"That's not possible!" Kamina looked over to the towering mecha in shock, watching as it was beginning to glow. "Who the hell got it to work!?"

"IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME, NAKED APE!"

* * *

"Uh, who is this guy again?"

Viral thought his wrath might boil over at Kamina's blithering attitude, far below his seat in the cockpit of Lagann Gurren. He took a breath and reminded himself of his current advantage's overwhelming superiority, however, and his fury was soon quelled to a simmer.

"He's the Beastman prisoner! The one I was trying to _tell _you about!"

"You will address me as Viral, Commander of the Far East Theater's Human Eradication Forces," Viral said over the loudspeakers with a dark and throaty voice. "Miss Yoko," he added, with a smirk.

"Viral..."

"I must thank you for all the information you've provided me with. Particularly with your precious 'Lagann Gurren' here."

"Quit your yammering!" Kamina shouted from far below the Beastman as he cracked his neck and popped his finger back into place. "If you know anything about Lagann Gurren, then you know it doesn't work right now. You're just sitting in a gigantic coffin, you stupid Beastman - so surrender, and we'll see about getting you better accommodations in your next cell."

"Oh, I don't think so, naked ape."

"Lagann Gurren... isn't working, Bro? Why didn't you say anything?"

So they were back to 'Bro' again, for the moment. That was good, at least, Kamina figured. "Sorry, Simon," he apologized. "I think it's because Gurren doesn't think I'm worthy to pilot it right now. But, I think with your help-"

"Worthy?" Viral cackled from high above them, and Lagann Gurren's face mimicked the sound in unison. "From where I'm sitting, you two squabbling fools are an embarrassment not only to yourselves, but to all the pathetic humans who've tried to make their stand here. And to think I thought for a moment humans might have been anything other than worthless vermin..."

"Hey, who are you calling-"

"Only _one _person here is worthy of taking the helm of this Gunman!" Viral grabbed hold of a tiny drill - the drill he had scavenged from Kamina's effects - and twisted it again, watching the composite Gunman begin to creak in motion once again.

Kamina kept shouting from below, even as Simon was now trying to usher him into cover. "Gurren will never find you worthy of piloting it! Mark my words!"

"Heh heh heh... perhaps. But then again... this isn't just Gurren, is it? Or even Lagann Gurren, for that matter?"

"Of course it is! Don't screw around with me!"

"No, it is _not._" Viral grabbed the two controls to punch them forward - and, to the humans' horror, the limbs of Lagann Gurren began to move with an effortless fluidity. "This crystalline armor? These long-range armaments? This noble, crested helm? This Gunman is as much my _Enki _as it is your Lagann Gurren.

"And at the helm of Enki, my birthright above all else in this world, I will not be denied!"

As he watched the full power of Lagann Gurren now spinning up to life, Kamina's belligerence was abruptly shifting to stunned disbelief. "Is this guy serious!?"

"Kamina, we need to go, now!" Yoko insisted, tugging on his arm as forcefully as she could. Still struggling as he was dragged away to safety, Kamina was only able to glance back for a moment to see the titanic mecha rip free of its moorings. His jaw dropped at the sight of the pieces of silver crystalline armor plating, sliding and rearranging with utter precision, shaping the mecha into a much sleeker profile. The helm once integrated into the chassis was pushed upward and outward and now bulged forth, like a gleaming, asymmetrical horn.

With that glance, Kamina knew that this wasn't Team Gurren's mecha anymore.

"NOW," Viral cried triumphantly as he brought the mecha to a fully-powered activation. "YOU WILL ALL FACE THE AWESOME MIGHT OF MY ENKI-LAGANN GURREN!"


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14: I bet you're going to say this is my fault too, huh?

* * *

Even in the best of times, Team Gurren's mess hall was never the most pleasant environment. With floor tiles scuffed and shattered, tables littered with bones and rinds, and corners packed with trash, it was the ultimate testament to functionality over form that characterized Gunmen pilots. Today, however, it was its stench that was proving downright unbearable to Kid Coeega.

"Can you give it a rest, Zorthy?" Kid asked, holding his nose as he took another bite of pygmy cowhead. "I don't usually care when you smoke, but we're trying to eat here."

Zorthy Kanai, another new member to Team Gurren, was a lean older man whose scraggly stubble drew as stark a contrast as any with the boyish Kid. "Eh, your oversized ears are distracting me from eating, too," he said between a mouthful of chow and a mouthful of cigarette, "but you don't see me telling you to get rid of 'em."

"How are my ears anything like your smoking!?"

"Relax, Kid. We all got our flaws, after all."

"It's _not _a flaw," Kid insisted, trying to keep his face from flushing with embarrassment.

"If you're trying to get his goat-moth, I think it's working," Kiyal snickered from the other end of the table. This place really did have an interesting cast of characters, she reflected. What had started as a stop of convenience was turning into something far more surprising... and permanent. Kittan had become one of the core pilots of Team Gurren's Gunmen Forces. Kinon was broadening her horizons under the tutelage of Leeron and his technicians. Even Kiyoh was getting in on the action, learning the ropes of Gunmen piloting under the tutelage of that 'Dayakka' guy. Come to think of it, they had been getting pretty close, lately...

That just left... Kiyal. The youngest Black Sibling knew she still had some wanderlust in her blood. The latent desire to return to the open steppes with a warble runner still beat within her chest. It wasn't enough to suggest they leave Gurren City, of course; the Black Siblings had discovered a peace and stability here that they once could have only dreamed of. _But... would it kill this place to have a little more excitement around here?_

"Hey, does anyone hear that?" Kid asked, interrupting his and Zorthy's ongoing quarrel.

"Heh, as if anyone else's ears would be big enough to pick up-" Zorthy started to scoff at the younger pilot, but stopped as his ears perked to something in the distance. "No, wait, I hear it too..."

"FOR THE LAST TIME, I DON'T RUN AWAY!"

"THEN CONSIDER YOURSELF BEING DRAGGED TO SAFETY!"

"SAVED? BY A WOMAN!? JUST WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM!?"

From around the corner, Kamina and Yoko burst into the mess hall, the duo possessed with all the subtlety of a rampaging slime grape-hippo. The response from those in the mess hall was rather muted in contrast - the antics of Team Gurren's superiors were well-known among the rank-and-file, whether by reputation or personal experience, and all seemed content to stay out of their way for the moment. A moment later Simon and Boota followed meekly behind, furtively glancing over their shoulders as they continued to keep a safe distance from the couple ahead.

"You're no match for him in that thing," Yoko continued the back-and-forth, swinging her rifle like a club.

"It's just a bluff," Kamina said as he ducked and dodged down the mess hall away from Yoko. "No way Gurren thinks that lame fuzzball is a worthy pilot. Not a chance!"

"Our wrecked hangar would beg to differ!"

"Um, excuse me, everyone," Simon spoke up to address the people sitting in the mess hall across from the squabbling pair kicking up a cloud of half-eaten food. "You all need to evacuate as soon as possible...!"

"Evacuate?" Kiyal propped her elbows from her previous lazy position. All of a sudden, she was getting an ominous feeling about this situation.

"Uwe heh heh," Zorthy snickered as he sized Simon up and down patronizingly. "What, from those two lovebirds over there?" he asked, with a nod to Kamina and Yoko's scuffle. "I think we can handle 'em, kid."

"Hey, don't bring me into this," Kid said.

"I wasn't talking to you-"

"Then why'd you say my name?"

"Hey, I can hardly help that you've got such a childish name."

"Oh, that is it...!"

Simon's face fell as he watched Kid leap up from the other side of the table to barrel dead-center into Zorthy's chest. The two pilots tumbled down to the ground as they began to grapple with one another, in an eerie mirroring of the struggle transpiring at the other end of the room. Together the four swept through the mess hall, creating an even bigger mess than usual as benches and tables alike were upended with the rest of the detritus.

Then the titanic leg of a mecha stomped through the north wall of the mess hall, rendering the previous carnage more or less moot.

"KAMINA! YOU WON'T ESCAPE!" a hoarse, maniacal voice called from above. The calamity instantly ended Team Gurren's infighting as every individual in the mess hall turned to face the gleaming silvery leg in awe. Even Zorthy's typical nonchalance was nowhere to be found as his mouth hung agape and the cigarette he had been chewing on fell to the ground.

"I bet you're going to say this is my fault too, huh?"

"It _is _your fault, numbskull!"

Simon ignored Kamina and Yoko's sniping as he rushed forward to grab Kiyal and drag her out of her seat, just in time to avoid a piece of falling debris from the ceiling. "Come on, let's go!" he shouted. "Move, move, move!"

Kid and Zorthy promptly followed the blue-haired youth's example as they headed for the exits, though the latter could not help but try to light up another cigarette as he ducked through into the southern hallways.

* * *

"Casualties?"

"None reported... so far," Leeron answered Leyte with as much of a grimace as his delicate skin would allow.

"Wouldn't expect that to last, yeah," Leyte concurred with the obvious unspoken apprehension. The two engineers were attempting to focus on their work as much as they could with the rest of the mechanics, but their eyes were continually being drawn to a trail of ruin just outside the control center. The ravine of terror carved by Lagann Gurren, a path of twisted metal and pulped concrete that broke through the walls of their compound and stretched as far as the eye could see.

_And every second I spend staring at it, it gets longer, _Leeron reminded himself as he tapped into the hangar's main speakers. "Twinboekun, this is Gurren Command. You are officially cleared for takeoff."

"Cleared!" "Cleared!" the two brothers piloting the mecha in question simultaneously echoed as their engines roared to life. It was a magnificent violet Gunman, appearing as a set of conjoined twins each with their own horn, arm, and set of eyes. The only difference in either side was the red and blue that differentiated their eyes, much like the sunglasses of its pilots Jorgun and Balinbow.

"Now, remember: pursue Lagann Gurren, but until the team is ready, do not engage-"

"ENGAGE!"

"ENGAGE!"

Leeron sighed in exasperation as the Twinboekun made a beeline for their target without any heed whatsoever to the tactics or strategy Leeron was attempting to formulate. Still, it would not do to lose his cool now, he reminded himself, as he began to methodically begin prep for the next Gunman send off. Team Gurren had lost too much already. "King Kittan, prepare for launch."

"I've _been _ready!" Kittan's belligerent voice responded over the comm. "What's the big idea, making the leader of the Black Siblings wait like this!?"

"It really is a miracle," Kinon said, in a small voice. The electronics specialist was examining a large hologram of the hangar in the center of the room, marveling at the localized damage. "Virtually all the Gunmen are still intact."

"Yeah, doesn't seem like Lagann Gurren's set on any kind of a wild rampage," Leyte said. "So far, anyway. It's got some kind of objective in mind."

"Yes..." Leeron murmured. A slight frown was etched on his otherwise flawless countenance as his thoughts turned back to the awakening of Lagann Gurren. That behemoth of behemoths, the face within a face, had undergone a change so drastic and rapid he could scarcely believe he had seen it, even now. But more troubling still to Leeron was what he had seen on the mecha's readouts before they went dark.

Gunmen piloted by Beastmen were stable. They relied on a consistent power output, and were prone neither to unexpected failures or surges of power. Humans were different. When they piloted a Gunman, the power generated seemed to fluctuate wildly, and Leeron suspected that it was tied into a pilot's emotional state, or something similar. 'Fighting Spirit', Kamina had remarked once to him, and it was as good a term to label the theory as any.

But the Beastman fugitive Viral was something else entirely; he had turned Leeron's theories on his head. As far as the engineer could tell Gurren didn't _have _a consistent power output to draw upon. Based on his prior research, he would have been doubtful if a Beastman was even capable of piloting the mecha. Yet Viral had not only commandeered Lagann Gurren, but had done so effortlessly, and reformulated it into a form more befitting his stature.

That little Gurren had so much power bottled up inside of it... and it just seemed to _let _Viral take it. As if it had a mind of its own. Could Kamina's ranting about being 'worthy' of the mecha actually have any truth to it? It wouldn't be the first time...

"HEY! What in the violet deathwastes are we still waiting for!?"

Leeron shook himself out of his reverie as he heard Kittan's voice break in over the comm again. "Sorry about that, hon. Let me know if there's any way I can... make it up to you."

"Don't you start with that weird crap again-"

"Who, me?" Leeron chuckled as he looked over to confirm Leyte's readings were all reading green. "King Kittan, you're cleared for launch."

"_Finally,_" Kittan said. He took as deep a breath as he could manage and punched the controls forward, generating forward momentum for the now-activated King Kittan. "Lagann Gurren, you're going down!"

* * *

It was the greatest feeling he had experienced in his entire life. And it was not enough.

With each stone-shattering step of Enki-Lagann Gurren, Viral could feel the power output steadily rising. Not that he could see it - there was no energy display in this cockpit outside of a single spiral in the central panel - but he could _feel _it, a dizzying surge of power flooding through his senses that simply overwhelmed the Beastman. On some level, the mecha's pilot felt as though he was just along for the ride in this engine of destruction.

Not that Viral necessarily minded, if he could get what he was looking for.

"Kamina! Stop hiding from me, you filthy human coward!"

Nothing. The first time Viral had taunted his prey in this hunt, Kamina's indignance had drawn him into revealing himself, and the lanky human had nearly paid for it with his life in the ensuing fusillade. To the predator's chagrin, however, the alpha female - Yoko - had dragged Kamina to safety at the last second. Now Viral's subsequent taunts were only met with silence. Kamina had either tempered his recklessness... or he was just too far away now to hear the goading.

And so despite all the power and freedom he had ever possessed at his fingertips, Viral was growing restless. He had absorbed many tidbits of information on Gurren City during his weeks of imprisonment, but hearsay was a far cry from firsthand experience. There were too many compound sectors to search, too many screaming humans, too many variables in play for Viral to account for them all.

_So start small, _Viral told himself. First order of business was to identify the sector he was currently sweeping. Its streets and alleys were more narrow than what the Enki-Lagann Gurren had encountered so far, so much so that it might have proved an obstacle even for its sleek profile had its musculature not shifted to accommodate the narrower space. _Pedestrian traffic only... so, some kind of residential block, then. _

The multi-storied edifices appeared to confirm the supposition, with their inviting windows and roomy partitions. Viral considered trying to draw his quarry out by razing the buildings to the ground, but the dwellings appeared to be uninhabited, mostly likely owing to their relatively recent construction. _Have they really been expanding that rapidly? _Viral asked himself.

"ENGAGE, ENGAGE!"

"What-" Viral started just as he felt himself fling forward in the cockpit from an impact to his mecha's backside. The Gunmen was sent tumbling through a set of sparking power lines near the buildings, but regained its balance and its footing just before it could clear the district entirely.

"Huh..." Viral jerked his body back upright and psyched himself back up to a battle-ready state as he spied his assailant charging toward him again, a violet Gunman with four gleaming eyes on its face. "Looks like I let my guard down," the Beastman said as his claws tightened their grip on the Gunman controls.

"But a sneak attack is just a sneak attack. It's only a surprise once!"

The leaping chop of the Twinboekun was effortlessly intercepted by a rising crescent kick from Enki-Lagann Gurren, smashing the violet Gunman dead center with all the force of a head-on collision. The force was so devastating that its facade nearly caved in, with such a complete collapse that it would have killed the pilot of a more orthodox Gunman.

"Whoa!" Jorgun exclaimed.

"That too close!" Balinbow agreed as the Twinboekun spun with a crash into one of the partially constructed buildings and thrashed in the piles of rubble.

"That's the reason why you two were supposed to wait for the rest of us, numbskulls!"

Viral augmented his sensory instruments to their maximum levels as he heard the new voice enter the fray, trying to get a bead on how many humans were closing in on his position. The readout returned Gunmen signals from almost every direction - it looked like it was going to be quite a few. That was just fine as far as the Beastman Commander was concerned. He had been itching for an excuse to blow off some steam.

_So there's the leader, _Viral thought as he zeroed in on the star-shaped Gunman he had seen Kamina and Simon fighting on earlier. Piloted by some kind of blowhard doing his best to imitate Kamina, it looked like.

"We're Team Gurren," the pilot of the star Gunman continued, "and we're going to take this escapee down as a team. While I _lead_ us all as a team. Got that?"

_All the obnoxiousness and none of the gravitas of Kamina, _Viral observed with annoyance. _I suppose I've settled for less before._

"But, brother," Kinon interrupted Kittan as she broke into King Kittan's feed from her station at the command center. "Didn't you try to run off without everyone else in the first place?"

"That's in the PAST, little sister, geez! Team Gurren is all about looking forward, not back!"

"YEAH, NOT BACK!" Jorgun and Balinbow agreed in unison.

Viral couldn't tell if these humans were intentionally trying to distract him, or if it was just proving to be an unforeseen perk of their inanity. Either way, he was having difficulty tracking the other Gunmen closing on Enki-Lagann Gurren's position in the chatter. There was a short bipedal one darting back and forth through the streets as it advanced, Viral was pretty sure. At least one more humanoid-type Gunmen was in striking distance on top of that, though it was unsettlingly quiet and difficult to track even at a heightened sensory sweep.

"Okay, then, humans," Viral announced to interrupt the humans' blathering before drawing back into a crouched stance. "You've proven enough a thorn in my side that I'll give you _this _honor, at least."

"Whaddya talkin' about, ya animal freak?"

"My swords." Viral's mecha drew out a pair of blades, still pristine from when they had been salvaged from the wreckage of the original Enki. In the hands of Enki-Lagann Gurren the swords were now visibly quivering with powerful vibrations and crackling with viridian energy.

"Team Gurren, huh," Viral said, lifting up the right blade of Enki-Lagann Gurren to point directly at King Kittan. "If you're all about looking forward, then allow me to show you what awaits at the end of your path."

Human and Beastman battle cries alike resounded through the abandoned district - and the battle was joined.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15: I get throwing the second-stringers a bone every now and then, but this is ridiculous!

* * *

The floor beneath King Kittan was crushed into a web of cracks as the mecha kicked off into the air and dived toward its target. The Gunman twinkled like a golden star in the waning twilight as it accelerated its trajectory from the edge of the rooftops to its target on the streets below.

"King Kittan Stinger!" Kittan's hot-blooded war cry could barely be heard over the pounding of the shrieking wind on his Gunman as its shape transformed from star to bullet. In an instant it hurtled itself directly into the Enki-Lagann Gurren, and the ground shuddered as the shock of the collision shattered windows and sundered wooden beams within a hundred yards.

Yet Enki-Lagann Gurren remained unharmed.

"Uncouth human," Viral sneered. Enki-Lagann Gurren's right-hand sword was now sheathed once more, leaving the hand free to open into a wide crystalline shield. The bulwark had not only completely blocked the dive attack of King Kittan, but was now halting its movement entirely: the golden Gunman was now lodged at a standstill in the center of Enki-Lagann Gurren's shield.

"Still, I must give you credit," Viral continued. "That attack of yours was strong enough to partially penetrate my shield. You'd have never managed to get yourself stuck there otherwise."

"Gosh, you can _really _hear the sincerity, can't ya?" Kittan grumbled. He tugged at his control sticks, but to no avail; King Kittan remained immobilized in its foe's exterior plating.

"Kittan...!"

Both Viral's and Kittan's eyes widened at hearing a small, gruff voice from behind. On pure instinct the Beastman lashed his mecha's left-hand blade around, meeting a lightning fast cut by only a slim margin.

"Makken!" Kittan said with no small measure of relief as he saw his ally's Gunman appear on his screen. "Took you long enough to get here, ya loudmouth!"

"LOUDMOUTH!" "LOUDMOUTH!"

"Hmph," Makken grunted, pressing his Mo-Shogun's sword against the unyielding blade of Enki-Lagann Gurren.

"It doesn't matter how many of you there are," Viral said dismissively as he swung the embedded King Kittan like a cudgel to bat away the Mo-Shogun. "Second-rate Gunmen are still second-rate!"

"We show you-"

"-second-rate!"

The twins within the Twinboekun combined to deliver a retort along with a new offensive, with Jorgun raising up an arm to cover their battle damage while Balinbow made a leaping swing with his side of their Gunman at their foe. Viral turned his shield to stop the brutish punch and forced the injured Gunman back with relative ease, but the force of the impact shook the King Kittan free from its inadvertent captivity.

"I'm back, baby!" Kittan exulted as the King Kittan sprung back into its default star-form. The golden mecha made a quick rotation with one of its spiked protrusions to counterattack at the Enki-Lagann Gurren's legs as it fell, taking care not to catch itself on its towering opponent's shield again. The tapered golden edge shredded through the gleaming silvery shins of Viral's mecha, but the damage was quickly erased only a handful of seconds after the strike landed.

"It... it repaired itself!?" Kinon gasped over the comm in disbelief.

"Yeah, what the hell is up with that?" Kittan asked.

"Self-repair," Leeron said softly, confirming the reports with the external reading data. "Lagann Gurren's battle data hinted at this kind of an ability in its battle against Enki. But I thought it was just a fluke..."

"That don't look like a fluke to me!"

"Ha, pitiful humans!" Viral roared from within the belly of Enki-Lagann Gurren. "I _knew _my loss was only due to this Gunman. I could never lose to mere humans in a proper fight. It wasn't my fault. IT WASN'T MY FAULT!"

The Beastman finished his cry with an onslaught of strikes, dismissing his shield to draw his second sword once more before spinning like a whirlwind to clear out the Gunmen opposing it in melee. Switching to a single opponent focus it then directed its blades at King Kittan and began a rapid series of thrusts, each attack shearing off metal as they were barely deflected by the golden Gunman's armored fists.

"H, hey, guys, I think he's losing it," Kittan said worriedly. He continued to give ground under the barrage in an attempt to preserve King Kittan's structural integrity, but he knew he was running out of room to evade - and fast. The Enki-Lagann Gurren was boxing him into a narrow path between two tall domestic edifices, and he was just about too cramped to effectively deflect its attacks, much less counter them. The Mo-Shogun attempted to pursue through the corridor, but found itself driven back by a series of rear hook kicks from Enki-Lagann Gurren.

"No one is going to save you now, human," Viral gloated, crossing his arms to form a pincer on either side of King Kittan's cockpit. "Now I will have my revenge, Kamina!"

"Y, you gotta be kidding me. Not only am I gonna buy it here, I'm goin' down for that bum Kamina of all people?"

"DIE!" Enki-Lagann Gurren's weapons glowed as it prepared to snap its shears closed - but found its charging abruptly halted, as a cannon bombardment from above rained explosive destruction on the silvery behemoth. Viral snarled in dismay at his momentarily unresponsive controls and Enki-Lagann Gurren slumped from the stunning blitz.

"What's with the defeatist attitude, Kittan? Weren't you supposed to _lead _us all as a team?"

"Iraak, you bozo!" Kittan shouted in painfully obvious relief. "You sure took your sweet time getting here!"

"Sorry, Kittan," Iraak said from his perch on the building directly above his position. "It took a lot of time to get into just the right position." The rear cannon belonging to the pilot's green bipedal Gunman, the Einzer, was pointed over the side of the rooftop, continuing to deploy its payload at point-blank range.

"Yeah, you better be sorry!"

"Insolent, dishonorable scum..." Viral seethed, directing his focus up to the haunches of the Gunman that had foiled his attack. "I will make you pay for daring to sully my Gunman's armor!"

"Hey, is he really calling that _his _Gunman now?" Kittan's rhetorical query was ignored by the Enki-Lagann Gurren, however, as it turned away from both King Kittan and Mo-Shogun and drove its blades into the side of the adjacent building. With a powerful surge the mecha pulled upward, ascending by driving its blades again and again into the wall until it reached the rooftops to face the green Gunman that had been harassing it.

"Oh," Iraak said. "That's not good."

Viral bared his serrated teeth triumphantly, as the Enki-Lagann Gurren's blades fell and proceeded to carve the Einzer's cannon apart.

* * *

"Mmm, it's more spacious than I thought it would be in here. Quiet, too."

"Y, yeah, that's the noise-canceling mode. It's so nothing can distract - eep! - the pilot during critical maneuvers," Dayakka said, feeling very distracted indeed by Kiyoh's breasts squeezing against him. He felt his arm slipping deep into cleavage despite his brawny size and musculature, and dimmed the lights in the cockpit even further as he squirmed. He could only pray that would be enough to spare him the embarrassment of Kiyoh noticing how furious he was blushing.

Kiyoh giggled as she held Dayakka's arm even tighter, savoring the contrast of her bosom's delicate softness with the unyielding exterior of his triceps. She had noticed him blushing for quite some time now, right around the point she had asked him to give her some private piloting lessons in his Dayakkaiser. Her intentions had been innocent (well, mostly innocent) with that request, but upon seeing Dayakka's bashful reaction she was finding it impossible to stop teasing him. Dayakka, leader of Littner, founding pilot of Team Gurren, self-assured bear of a man, flummoxed by the prospect of spending time alone with a woman? It was just too good.

"And this would be, um, us coming to the end of the Parks Sector. Mostly grass plains for now, so not much in the way of varied terrain for your training." Dayakka shrugged by way of apology as well as an attempt to dislodge himself from Kiyoh's breasts, but the Black Sibling held him tight in her clutches.

"That's quite alright," Kiyoh replied. "The scenery and mood more than made up for it, wouldn't you say?" She laid her head down on the stoic pilot as payback for his escape attempt, adding the sensation of her plush blonde curls to the smoothness of her skin.

"I... I... that is, um..."

"Hee hee, I guess you _wouldn't _say, then."

"No, no, that's not it!" Dayakka said, looking up frantically to change the subject. "Up ahead, the next sector is the expanded Residential Sector. It's got long narrow corridors perfect for the Dayakkaiser's artillery fire, but it's the kind of setting where you've gotta be careful about the corners: Dayakkaiser's long barrel and short arms put it at a heavy disadvantage in melee combat. Sector's still under construction, so it's not populated yet."

"Hmm. Gives us some time to be alone, then."

_This woman!_ Just what did she think this all was, honestly? Kiyoh was a quick enough study, true, but she didn't even have her own mech yet. No two Gunmen were alike, after all, and it wasn't like she was planning to pilot Dayakkaiser, was it? Furthermore, Dayakka knew the best ways to hone Gunmen skills were in live-fire training exercises. Coordinated squadron tactics and lightning quick reflexes were the hallmarks of crack Gunmen pilots, not tranquil walks in the park, idyllic small talk... quiet cuddling in a dark room...

"Dayakka, darling...?"

"Y... yeah?" Dayakka gulped as he looked down at Kiyoh, feeling the impetus to make some kind of move stirring deep within him.

"What's that flashing light on the console?"

"Huh? Light?" Dayakka took a double-take as he focused in on the Dayakkaiser's control panel. Sure enough, there was a blinking red light there. No telling how long it'd been blinking, either, given the level of... distraction Kiyoh was proving to be. "What's that one again? The emergency light...?" Dayakka scrunched his face quizzically as he continued to stare at the console. "But I don't remember hearing about any emergency..."

"Didn't you say something about this button activating noise-canceling mode?" Kiyoh asked, leaning over and flipping a switch with a flip of her hair.

"Oh, right, that-"

"CODE RED! HOSTILE GUNMAN HAS PENETRATED BORDERS OF GURREN CITY!"

"A hostile Gunman!?" Kiyoh exclaimed. She anxiously glanced up at Dayakka, who was already spinning his arms to crank his mecha's power levels up to maximum.

"Kiyoh. This isn't any place for amateur pilots, okay?"

The eldest sister of the Black Siblings pursed her lips at the all-too-accurate label, but just gave a small nod in response.

"Okay, then. I'll drop you off at the nearest checkpoint, and then-"

Drowning out the remainder of the Littner leader's plan was the cacophony of gnarled metallic titans crashing through a nearby wall. Gunmen flashed with destructive motion as they spilled onto the street, with several damaged smaller ones attempting to gang up on a much more imposing figure.

"That's Lagann Gurren!" Dayakka said in disbelief.

"ENKI-LAGANN GURREN!" an inhuman voice from within the towering Gunman bellowed. It whirled its swords in a flurry of wild slashing, taking one of the diagonal points of King Kittan and an arm from Mo-Shogun with the attack.

"Could you _please_ try not to agitate the Beastman any further, Dayakka?" Kittan's voice broke in over the comm, sounding none too pleased at its new battle damage.

"PLEASE!" "PLEASE!" Jorgun and Balinbow's concurrence sounded almost like a plea considering the nearly wrecked condition the Twinboekun looked to be in currently.

"Welcome back, Dayakka," Leeron's voice added to the chorus of voices on the comm. "Whatever you were doing before you got here, I hope it was important."

"I..." Dayakka forced himself to keep his eyes forward and not look at Kiyoh as he strafed the melee. "I've got no excuse, guys. Sorry."

"Dayakka..." Kiyoh whispered as she stared up at his stony visage. The fun and games were all forgotten now, replaced only with an implacable resolve to do his duty.

"No one cares about that, ya big lug!" Kittan shouted. "Shoot 'im, shoot 'im!"

Dayakka obliged with a fresh fusillade of screaming cannon shots, but Enki-Lagann Gurren was ready for it. The first shot was sliced through by a quick draw sword strike, which was returned to its sheathe to make room for the mecha to manifest its shield once again. It charged forward to meet the Dayakkaiser in melee.

And just as Dayakka had predicted, his Gunman was horrifically outclassed in the close-quarters. He pulled the triggers on his controls again and again, but it was all for naught as Enki-Lagann Gurren sliced across with its remaining unsheathed sword, cutting the Dayakkaiser's cannon in half with a horizontal cut.

"Ouch, that _sucks, _man," Iraak said sympathetically inside his own similarly crippled Gunman.

Viral brought his mecha's other sword back out with a satisfied growl, and prepared to finish off the hapless Dayakkaiser. Then an explosion brought a cloud of choking smoke, too thick for Viral to see even an inch beyond the cockpit.

"What the hell!?" Viral was flabbergasted. He had covered all the other trajectories of approach from the Gunmen at his rear. He had even scanned the aerial vectors of approach, after the earlier debacle with the green Gunman. So where did the explosion come from...?

"Kiyoh...!"

"Hee hee, not bad for an amateur," Kiyoh called down from the top of the Dayakkaiser's open hatch. Her slingshot band was still bouncing with the motion of the snap of Kiyoh's shot, which had launched a fistful of obsidian explosives directly into the Enki-Lagann Gurren. "Isn't that right, Dayakka darling?"

Dayakka wiped his brow furiously, suddenly not quite sure whether he was more scared of the rampaging mecha or Kiyoh. "I didn't mean it that way..."

"Hmm, 'darling', huh?" Leeron interjected. "Sounds like you _were _doing something important, then."

"Getting reports of Kid Coeega in the Kidknuckle and Zorthy Kanai in the Sawzorthn reaching the target zone," Kinon said from the communications station. She shook her bobbed brown hair in resignation. "That's all the reserves, Chief."

"K, Kid! He's alright?" Iraak's relieved voice seemed to galvanize his gimped Einzer, and it stalked in Enki-Lagann Gurren's direction with the rest of Team Gurren.

"Yeah, sorry to disappoint, big brother," Kid chirped over the comm. "Had a close call with that thing earlier, took awhile to get back to the Gunmen Hangar. After I had to smack down a jerk who doesn't know when to put down the cigarettes."

"No need to go in on _that,_" Leyte's laconic voice chided the young pilot as she took a self-conscious drag on her cigarette.

"Hey, you and me are gonna gonna settle the score after this," Zorthy said, keeping his Sawzorthn at pace with the Kidknuckle. "Believe that."

The smoke was now dissipating from around the hulking, still mostly undamaged Enki-Lagann Gurren, allowing the clustered humans to now zero in on its precise position. "It doesn't _matter _how many of you cheap, second-rate Gunmen there are," Viral said as he turned the Enki-Lagann Gurren around to face the half-shattered Team Gurren corps. "I am a Commander of the Human Eradication Forces. A decorated warrior of the eternal capital.

"I have taken every weapon you have thrown at me! Shattered all defenses you have erected! I wield a Gunman that is unstoppable - _invincible, _even! So stop wasting my time, surrender to your betters, and bring me Kamina-"

"Hey, Beastman!"

"WHAT!?"

"Shut up and fight," Kittan spat, transforming the King Kittan into bullet mode to charge. Enki-Lagann Gurren attempted to lift its hand to block with its shield again, but found itself stymied by a grab from behind: the short arms of the Dayakkaiser, now without the interference of its long barrel, was restraining it with an impressive surge of strength.

"It's... so... powerful...!" Dayakka grunted as he attempted to hold on.

"Don't let go!" Kiyoh said, grabbing the control and gritting her teeth along with Dayakka.

Unable to free itself in time, Enki-Lagann Gurren's dual face was smashed in by the Gunman-turned-projectile. Starting to self-repair almost as soon as the blow landed, it reached over for King Kittan with its free arm - and found itself restrained again. This time, however, the impediment was tenfold; every Gunman in Team Gurren was now dogpiling Enki-Lagann Gurren at the same time. Their raucous war cry echoed past the borders of Gurren City as the Gunmen began to brawl with total abandon, and their melee cascaded through building after building toward the center of the city.

* * *

"...so you're saying _all _the Gunmen are fighting now?"

"It seems like it," Yoko said, nodding after placing a hand to her headphones.

"So why isn't the great and mighty Kamina out there, too!?" Kamina roared with burning, indignant rage. "I mean, come on. I get throwing the second-stringers a bone every now and then, but this is ridiculous! You don't go for your backups during the big climactic showdown! This is the time for heroes to get the spotlight!"

"Maybe you should have thought of that before you let Lagann Gurren get stolen."

"Maybe _you _should have thought to not let the dangerous Beastman prisoner out to play a game of hide-and-go-seek!"

"Well, I didn't think if he escaped that you'd just leave your Gunman keys LAYING AROUND ON THE FLOOR!"

Simon reflexively tuned out Kamina and Yoko arguing again as he tried to get more comfortable in his chair. _Well, it was better than the frigid pantry, _he thought. Boota appeared to mirror his sentiment as he snuggled up to him encouragingly. They were in the commercial sector now, near old Littner Village. Not for any reason, of course, other than that's where they decided to finally stop running after the Beastman had lost them. Zorthy and Kid had made a run back for the Gunman Hangar to take on the escapee as soon as possible, thankfully... but Simon and Kamina didn't have a Gunman anymore.

"Hey, whaddya thinkin' about, little guy? You hungry? We _are _in a restaurant, after all."

They had, however, picked up something instead: Kiyal Bachika, a lithe and mischievous girl with a million questions for the founding members of Team Gurren, it seemed.

"Or maybe you're wondering what our next move is?"

No, thinking about the future was still far too premature for Simon when he still had so many demons to lay down in his past. Kamina's words, back before Viral had stopped them... he felt truth behind those words. Maybe he didn't agree with Kamina, but he knew it now, without a doubt: Kamina thought he was too soft. Too trusting. Too weak. And he thought Simon was going to get someone killed because of it.

The suspicion was one thing - it's not like Simon had never reflected on his soft-heared nature before, even back when the two blood brothers lived in Giha Village. But this absolute, total certainty of one result by Kamina was borderline... unnatural.

Plus, why go to all the trouble of getting Simon to figure it out like this? He could have just _told _him, after all. Well, unless of course Kamina didn't want Simon to trust _him__, _either.

_This is really making my head hurt, _Simon thought with a groan.

"Or maybe you're thinking about how everyone else is doing?"

* * *

Viral attempted to generate his crystalline shield again, but was stopped - this time by the simian Gunman, an ungainly freak of metal that nevertheless was able to catch both partially formed edges of the shield and snap them before they could connect. The Beastman attempted to juke his Gunman, but his legs were being relentlessly shredded by the short and squat mecha the humans had fielded. He tried to bat them off, but his arms would not move quickly enough, contorted as they were by taller, more humanoid mecha pounding on either side of Viral. That left all the opening in the world for the remaining stout, one-armed Gunman to connect with a wind-up punch, and knock Enki-Lagann Gurren skyward.

"Rrgh! AGAIN! MORE POWER!" Viral barked. This time, however, there was no response. The self-repair protocols were failing.

"Alright, Dayakkaiser, let's do it!" Kittan said, hopping on top of the squat blue Gunman as he watched their enemy reach the zenith of its flight.

"You got it, big brother!"

"Kiyoh? What the-" Kittan's voice was cut off as the Dayakkaiser popped up with a backflip, sending King Kittan up like a shooting star after Enki-Lagann Gurren. As the edges of the golden Gunman sheared off another layer of armor plating, exposing the red exterior beneath like blood, the inescapable reality was becoming all too clear to Viral.

Enki-Lagann Gurren was being taxed to its limits.

"Is this... it...?" Viral rasped as his Gunman hit the pavement and a shockwave blew through the immediate environment... wherever they were. Viral just couldn't tell, other than the fact that it seemed populated. "This can't be... all I have...!"

"There's too many people here! We gotta- OW!" Kittan was once again interrupted as his Gunman hit the ground shortly after Enki-Lagann Gurren, stunning him and King Kittan for the moment.

"Kittan is right," Iraak filled in. "We need to crush the Beastman now, before anyone else gets hurt."

"CRUSH!" "CRUSH!" Jorgun and Balinbow sounded hyped to the boiling point at that prospect, even as the Twinboekun lurched forward with a practically zombie-like gait.

_Before anyone else gets... of course. That's it. _

Viral's eyes widened to the size of saucers as he wrenched Enki-Lagann Gurren up again, just in time to see the humans finish surrounding it with their Gunmen. Team Gurren prepared for a counterattack from the Beastman, but instead watched dumbstruck as Enki-Lagann Gurren leapt into the sky to clear the field entirely. Seconds later it hit the ground and began charging - in the exact opposite direction of Team Gurren and their mechas. The Beastman was running.

"Hey, what's up with all that?" Kid asked. Both pilot and Gunmen alike scratched their head in confusion as they watched Enki-Lagann Gurren fade rapidly into the distance - far too rapidly for any of their crippled Gunmen to keep pace.

"Damn, that sucks..." Zorthy said faintly before opening up his comm channel. "Awaiting further instruction from headquarters."

"Where could it possibly be going?" Leeron murmured. He was futilely trying to make sense of Enki-Lagann Gurren's last bit of combat data, but he couldn't come up with any answers at the moment.

"Your guess is as good as mine, boss," Leyte said to the slim technician.

"I've got a trajectory vector for it," Kinon announced. She flicked a few buttons in rapid succession, transmitting her data to the main screen.

Leeron only took a few seconds to absorb the Gunman's trajectory before he let out a gasp and dropped to his knees as if he had seen a ghost.

"Boss!" Leyte cried as she saw him hit the ground. "Are you alright?"

"The Beastman..." Leeron continued to lock his eyes on the screen, not daring to take them away for a second.

"What?" Kinon asked. "Do you know where he's heading? Where is it? Leeron!"

"Littner Village. He's heading straight for Old Littner Village."


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16: You think the darkness can hide a man's scars?

* * *

"Old Littner Village!?" Yoko's agitation was visibly apparent as she finished listening to Leeron relay his intel over her headphones.

"Old Littner?" Kamina asked. "Wouldn't that just be Gurren City before we renamed it?"

"You mean before _you _renamed it, on your own, without consulting anyone else?"

"That's what I said!"

"In any case, that's not Old Littner. Or if it is, then this would be... Old Old Littner, or something."

"...I'm really confused now," Simon said, with Kiyal and Boota nodding in agreement. Yoko sighed resignedly as she realized she was going to have to explain things, not even noticing Boota leap across from Simon into her cleavage as she started.

"Old... Old Littner Village is the pit we lived in before we came up to the surface."

"Yeah, I think I recall you saying something along those lines," Simon said.

"Yeah, even _I _remember that!" Kamina complained a few yards behind the rest of the group.

"Your spotty memory is nothing to be proud of..." Yoko muttered before continuing. "Well, then do you remember the part about how a poisonous gas leak forced us all above ground?"

"I think it's pretty obvious that I wouldn't!"

"That'd make sense," Kiyal said as she bit her lip with a fangy tooth. "Most people stay below ground unless something happens to drive them out. Or if something destroys their village entirely..."

"Not me!"

"We sealed our original village off," Yoko said. "But it's still there - along with all the poisonous gas. And that's where Leeron says the Beastman fugitive is heading right now."

"Wait, what?"

"You think he's going to unseal the village and release the poisonous gas," Simon said as a pall fell over his face.

"Is it really enough to pose a threat to the people above-ground?" Kiyal asked.

Yoko nodded her head darkly. "Littner Village was built on top of a massive weapons cache. Even now, the majority of the materiel we have comes from what was salvaged during the original evacuation of Littner. If that gas gets out, some of our most vital sectors could be compromised. Worst case scenario? We could lose the entire city."

Kamina sped up to reach the rest of the group at hearing this. "So we send some Gunmen down there to stop that fuzzball! What's the holdup!?"

"None of the other Gunmen we scrambled would be able to intercept before he reached the target. On top of that, none of the Gunmen we have are small enough to maneuver in the tunnels down to Old Littner. Except..."

"Gurren," Simon gasped.

Yoko confirmed his thoughts with a deathly frown. "If he detaches the mini-Gunman from the bulk of Lagann Gurren, he could seal the canopy to protect himself from the poison and unleash it on the city."

"Then we've gotta take him down!" Kamina shouted decisively. The leader of Team Gurren unsheathed his nodachi with a snarl and began a mad dash down the street.

"Kamina!" Yoko yelled. "We're supposed to stand by and wait for instruction from HQ!"

"No more waiting! A real man doesn't hesitate when the moment to strike appears!"

"But-"

"But nothing!"

"But you're running in the wrong direction!"

Kamina tried his best to not look embarrassed as he skidded to a stop... and realized he was going to have to ask for directions.

* * *

If anything was going to draw Kamina out, this would be it.

Ever since having been informed of the chemical hazard beneath Gurren City, Viral had kept it in the back of his mind. It was his last resort, an ace in the hole to turn on the humans. Not that he expected to ever have to use it, of course. Dispatching humans in straightforward combat was child's play to a Commander of the Human Eradication Forces.

Those sentiments felt as though they were a lifetime away now. Viral had been defeated; broken in combat by the combined forces of hijacked Gunmen. Even with more power than he had ever thought possible to wield in Enki-Lagann Gurren, it was not enough to overcome the humans.

_No matter, _Viral thought bitterly to himself as he disengaged the small, interior mecha from the bulk of Enki-Lagann Gurren. It stepped out into a long-abandoned subterranean passage, still donning the crested helm once born by his original Enki. _The humans were just a distraction._

It was all a distraction from the what really mattered: Kamina. Once he could defeat Team Gurren's leader and avenge his original defeat, everything else would fall into place. So he would force Kamina to face him here, in this forsaken pit deep beneath his stronghold... or he would unleash this disaster of the humans' own making upon them all.

_It's only fitting, after all._

* * *

"Just stop and think for once, Kamina," Yoko chided as she and the rest of the group struggled to keep up with their headstrong leader's frenetic pace. "How do you expect to take on a Gunman without one of your own?"

"Sword," Kamina replied quickly, grabbing his nodachi's hilt as if to underscore his resolve.

"That... ugh, never mind," Yoko said, resisting the urge to punch the man in front of her. "More importantly, if you don't have a Gunman, you won't have any protection from the poison gas down there. How do you expect to survive long enough to stop the prisoner in the first place?"

"I... I don't know, alright! I'll think of something!"

"Is this how you operate, Kamina? Just act with no regard to the consequences, even if you or the people around you get hurt in the process?"

"I..."

"Is there anywhere in Old Littner the poisonous gas wouldn't have spread to?" Simon suddenly spoke up, pushing his way through the crowded street to catch up as they continued to wind eastward toward their destination.

"Uh... I guess?" Yoko answered. "It's pretty dense, so all the upper sections should be clear. But you can't reach any of them without accessing the lower level..."

"I think we should put that to the test." Simon grinned as he hoisted up his handheld drill.

"Ha, ha, now that's what I'm talking about!" Kamina cheered. "The drill that's gonna pierce the heavens!"

"Or the upper levels of our old village," Yoko said with a roll of her eyes.

* * *

"Status update, Kinon."

"U, u, uh, sir! The Lagann Gurren reading - well, now it's just a Gurren reading - has just breached the boundaries of Old Littner Village.

"So, that's it, then...?" Leeron said as he stared into space with a tight grimace on his face. "The poison's been released?"

"N, not exactly, sir," Kinon squeaked as she scrambled to access the environmental readings. "After accessing Old Littner Village, the Beastman fugitive resealed the doors."

"He's not releasing the poison..." Leyte said. "Well, that's awful big of him, ain't it...?"

"That... doesn't make sense," Leeron muttered, taking the time to examine the intel from over Kinon's shoulder. "Why would a Beastman pass up the chance to use that against us...?"

"Sir!" Kinon piped up again unexpectedly, rattling Leeron out of his reverie. "T, there... there's an incoming transmission."

"From one of the Gunmen?" Leeron sighed and shook his head negatively. "I _just _told them to keep all comm channels clear until we figure this out."

"I, I understand sir, but..."

"But...?"

"But the transmission is coming from Gurren...!"

_So that's it, _Leeron realized. _Leverage._ He cracked the knuckles beneath his porcelain soft skin as daintily as he considered the threat, glancing to each of his subordinates and the Gunmen readouts representing the lives of those he had been entrusted to protect.

"So what's the play, boss?" Leyte finally asked.

"It wouldn't do to keep our gentleman caller waiting, girls," Leeron answered as he crossed his arms in anticipation. "Onscreen."

"_Humans._"

The voice and visage breaking through on the comm screen was startlingly animalistic, even by the standards of Beastmen. Row after row of jagged teeth filled the bulk of the screen, with slavering so intense the moisture threatened to fog up the entire screen. A pair of heavily dilated eyes could be seen staring just at the top of the screen, both orbs stretching grotesquely as they pressed against the viewer.

"Wha... wha... uhn..." Kinon stammered. Her eyes were helplessly locked on the Beastman, so transfixed she was by its bestial nature.

"That would be us," Leeron said coolly in a marked contrast to Kinon's visible dread. "Well, not all of us. I'm sure if you give me some time, I could get the rest of the humanity to join us. Hope you don't mind being cramped." Yet he, too, could not bring himself to take his eyes off the monstrous Beastman as its pale skin contorted and it began to speak again.

"Your pathetic banter does you no credit, naked ape."

"Ooh, not even a little bit?" Leeron feigned a look of mock-shame. "I'm so hurt."

"Your jibes are of no consequence, fool. There is only one human I require the presence of."

* * *

"Ooh, I'm flattered, but... don't you think things are moving a little too fast, honey? Maybe we should just take it slow..."

"What in blazes- KAMINA, YOU DOLT! I WANT KAMINA!"

"Another man? It's bad enough you're a Beastman, but now it turns out you're a cad as well?"

Yoko suppressed another giggle as she continued listening to the heated back and forth over her headphones as she and her companions crawled through the tunnel created by Simon's digging.

"Every time you laugh, I feel like I should be crying," Kamina groaned from just behind Yoko.

"Well, it's true, yeah, he's still completely obsessed with avenging his humiliation at your hands. Leeron's... well, he's buying us as much time as he can until we get there."

"Speaking of that, Simon, do you really think you're gonna be able to find the place Yoko was talking about?" Kiyal asked from just ahead of Yoko. "I mean, it's not exactly like you can see where we're going!"

"Well, no, I can't. But there's more to it than that," Simon explained. "When you drill as much as I do, the rocks and dirt start calling to you. The layers of rocks, the composition, the feeling where there's a space or gap... and if Old Littner Village's boundaries are the same as Giha Village's, it should have the same kind of rock textures as we get closer to it. It's all patterns. In some ways, it's like a beautiful piece of music. Music that only I can hear."

"Wow," Kiyal marveled and coughed a bit from a bit of dirt getting in her mouth as she crawled. "You totally do dig _way _too much!"

Simon sighed resignedly at the commentary hitting way too close to home, but Kamina was quick to chime in as he did. "That's right! That's what makes him my blood brother, Simon the Digger! And his drill-"

"-could stand to go a bit faster," Yoko interjected dryly before turning her attention back to the girl ahead of her. "Kiyal, are you absolutely sure you want to keep coming with us? It's going to be really dangerous from here on out, and you could get hurt. I think you should try to get to a shelter while you still can..."

"No can do, Miss Yoko," Kiyal said, glancing back to stick her tongue out devilishly at the girl behind her. "Sure, I'm in over my head here, but the rest of the Black Siblings are doing their best to stop that Beastman from destroying our home. I'd never be able to face them again if I backed down now!"

"Home, huh...?" Simon murmured from up ahead, seemingly lost in thought as he worked.

"Besides, it's not as if I'm in a position to turn around at this point, is it?"

"You got a point there," Kamina chuckled. "I don't think even a skinny girl like you could get past Yoko's fat ass."

Yoko stopped for a brief second, and clenched her fists with such intensity that Boota was nearly shuddered out from between her breasts by the force. Then she closed her eyes and, with deliberate precision, kicked back into Kamina's face with the heel of her boot.

"Yeowwwch!" the unsuspecting teenager cried as he felt his face practically caved in under the assault, traumatized to such an extent that even his distinctive sunglasses almost fell off in the aftermath.

"That was..."

"For what!?"

"...for a _lot _of things."

"...fair enough," Kamina grumbled.

"Got it!" Simon suddenly called from up ahead, and his three companions felt their pupils suddenly shrink as a wave of light cascaded into the tunnel from a new opening.

* * *

"So, this is Old Littner Village, huh...?" Kamina mused as he dropped down from above into a musty, but otherwise well-kept bedroom. It was still illuminated by a soft and perpetual glow, one nearly identical to that of Giha Village. It was the kind of ambiance, Kamina reflected to himself, that almost seemed designed to shove all thoughts of a surface from a person.

"Yeah," Yoko said. "Looks like you got the right place, Simon. The living quarters were on the top level."

"Well, of course I did," Simon said with a defiant smirk, dusting off the dirt he had caked himself with getting to their destination. "Just who the hell do you think I am?"

"Geez, just a little bit of confidence and he picks up all of your bad habits, Kamina," Kiyal said.

"I think that might be more us spending most of our lives together..." Simon murmured.

"Alright, everyone, take a breather," Kamina said with an abruptly authoritative tone, all at once deep, rich, and commanding. He stepped out into the hallway and brought his nodachi up from his side to his shoulder, looking furtively for any side of movement. "We'll need to be rested once we face our foe here, in the belly of the beast."

"You don't have to tell me twice," Yoko said, already clearing out the accumulated dirt from her rifle's crevices.

"I... guess I'll adjust my hair clips here with Simon," Kiyal said as she watched Yoko follow Kamina out into the hall. "Hey, do you have any hair clips, Simon?"

"Um, no. Just my goggles."

"...so you want me to adjust those, or what?"

"Man, Old Littner had those terrible skinny rock-bridges, too," Kamina observed as he looked down to the end of the hall. "Most of this architecture is similar, come to think of it..."

"Yeah, I noticed that when I came to Giha Village," Yoko said at Kamina's back. "Maybe the pits were all constructed from the same template? Or even by the same person...?"

"Could be..." Kamina trailed off slightly before turning around. "Hey, Yoko."

"Hmm?"

"The poison... how did the Beastman find out about it in the first place?"

"Oh." Yoko glanced down dejectedly at her feet. "Yeah, I know what you're probably thinking... and it's right. I told Viral about the poison gas leak."

"Yeah, I thought so," Kamina said, shaking his head.

"I... I just thought with all the other info he'd given us, he might have been able to come up with something. Some kind of solution for getting rid of the poison. But it was stupid." Yoko fumed and bit her lip as she brought her eyes to meet Kamina's despite her blushing shame. "No matter what we've been through, exposing myself like that was foolish. Everything that's happened is my fault. And now everyone's at risk. If that poison gets out-"

"That's enough!"

"Huh?" Yoko's eyes widened as Kamina's shout suddenly cut off her bitter self-condemnation.

"You think the great Kamina could let a woman take the blame for his mistakes? Bury them deep underground in the ruins of a forgotten village so no one else can see them?" Kamina scoffed, twirling his nodachi defiantly to point it directly at Yoko's chest. "As if he would ever stand for such a thing!"

"You're not making a lot of sense there, Kamina," Yoko said quizzically. Both Yoko's and Boota's expressions of confusion mirrored one another as Kamina strode back and forth to the cadence of his inimitable braggadocio.

"Whose idea was it to capture the Beastman?" Kamina asked, pounding his fist against a nearby wall to punctuate his question. "Who had him locked up without a clear plan on how to use him? And who didn't set out rules on interacting with him to protect the rest of the city?"

"Uh..."

"When they talk about the boneheaded leader of Team Gurren whose actions lead to this catastrophe, they'll be talking about _me, _the mighty Kamina!" Kamina shouted with a painful looking grin as he stared meaningfully into Yoko's amber eyes. "You'd best remember it!"

"You really are an idiot, aren't you?" Yoko whispered half to herself as she watched Kamina finish the humiliating declaration with that stupidest of grins on his face. Any further observations, however, were interrupted as she felt a tremor begin to well up from somewhere far below.

"Leeron, this is Yoko. What's happening?"

"Sorry, honey," Leeron answered over the comm. "I couldn't stall him any longer. Get ready - he's headed your way now."

"Copy." Yoko whirled back to Kamina. "Kamina! The Beastman's-"

"-coming. I can feel it, yeah." Kamina began the protracted draw of his nodachi from its saya, watching the blade gleam in the soft lights as he started toward the narrow rock-bridge ahead.

"We need to come up with a plan," Yoko insisted. "Maybe if we can hide somewhere, we'll be able to take him by surprise!"

"No. No more running," Kamina snapped. The sword continued to draw its almost comical length from the long saya, each scrape of metal echoing in the long-abandoned hollows of Old Littner Village.

"KAMINA!" Yoko shouted, loud enough to startle Simon and Kiyal to follow into the hallway at the sound of her voice.

"You hear me, fuzzball!?" Kamina thundered as he reached the rock bridge and stared down into a noxious far beneath him. "You wanted me? You got me!

"A man who traverses the bridge of destiny with his friends at his back and oblivion before him! He stands athwart the bottomless pit of despair and defies gravity in his quest to right the wrongs of his past. You think the darkness can hide a man's scars? You think a man can bury pain and lock it away forever? Well, now _you're _about to see just exactly how-"

A sound like an earthquake's fissure drowned out Kamina as he reached the end of his monologue with a resounding crack, followed by a streak of white rising from the poison depths below to rise a full story above Kamina. Landing with a flourish, a helmeted miniature mecha stared down with intense yellow eyes at the single human who had dared to face it in single combat... and drew a pair of swords.

"Oh, please, Kamina," Viral rumbled from the depths of the Gunman. "By all means, continue."


End file.
